Wednesday, June 01, 2005

MERMAID BABY IS BACK!!!


Isaw the headline and in an instant I knew!! For those of you who know and love mermaid baby, good news!!! I FOUND MORE PICTURES OF MERMAID BABY!!!!

Here's the story which accompanied the pics.

New Hope: Baby Born With Mermaid Legs

She is called the little mermaid. Born with her legs seamlessly fused together from her thighs to her ankles, little Milagros Cerron of the Andean town of Huancayo, Peru underwent 4-1/2 hours of very risky and delicate surgery early Wednesday that surgeons described a "true success," reports The Associated Press. This is the first of several surgeries that will extend over a 15-year period.

Milagros, whose name means "miracles" in Spanish, was born with an extremely rare condition called sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome, in which her legs are fused together. Only 1 in 70,000 people are born with mermaid syndrome and almost all die within a few hours. Milagros is a miracle because she has lived. Reuters reports that just one other "mermaid" is known to have survived, and that is American Tiffany Yorks, 16, whose legs were separated when she was a few months old.

In this first operation, a team of 10 surgeons, pediatricians, and heart specialists led by Dr. Luis Rubio focused on separating her ankles and the lower third of her calves. During the past three months, silicone bags filled with a saline solution have been inserted in Milagros' legs to stretch the skin so it will cover her legs once they are cut apart, notes AP. The child has recently suffered from frequent, recurring urinary infections and a low red blood count that have slowed her progress ahead of surgery. She also has a deformed left kidney and a very small right one located very low in her body. Her digestive and urinary tracts and her genitals share a single tube.

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