Parasitic Twins

In my opinion, it is really awesome to have a twin sibling, as in identical twin. Not only your appearences are exactly the same, many of the twins will have telegraphy which is so cool! However, when you look at your identical twin sibling, other than the striking resemblance, what will be in your mind?

Just imagine...

For non-identical twins, two eggs are fertilised by two sperms in the ovary. For identical twins, an fertilised egg is split into two, and grows into two individuals. The person right in front of you is your closest sibling, but none of you is older or younger. You two are of the same age, exist at the same second of time.

Long long time ago when both of you were in the womb of your mom, actually is not "both" of you, as there is only one egg. Therefore, the person living with you is not your sibling! The person used to be a part of you, or you are just used to be a part of the person.

Above is just my personal opinion. In the following, I am going to write about Parasitic Twins.

Parasitic twin occurs when a twin embryo fail to separate fully during development in the uterus, and one of the twin fail to develop as per normal. The undeveloped twin will be incompletely formed on the fully developed twin.

An example is Sanjay Kumar in India. In the case of his, it is known as fetus in fetu. This is a condition whereby one of the twin envelops the other as they grow in the womb at early pregnancy. The poor twin that has been wrapped inside the other will attach itself to the blood vessels in its sibling and feeding off him as a parasite! So the undevelop twin in the body is alive, absorbing nutrients from its host sibling and continues to grow in size!

Sanjay Kumar before the sugery

At the age of 36 back in 1999, Sanjay had been living his life with a huge bulge on his belly, he looked like 9 months pregnant. At that time, he could hardly breathe due to his extremely swollen belly. He went through a surgery to remove the "tumor" which would threaten his life sooner and later.

As the surgeons cut the lump in Sanjay's stomach, gallons of pus gushed out from the lump. Finally, he decided to get rid of the "tumor" in order to lead a more normal life. To the horror of the surgeons operating on the tumor, they found Sanjay's twin sibling! The weird, strange half-formed body of Sanjay's sibling had fully developed limbs, its finger-nails were long signifies that it was still living and growing inside Sanjay at the time of removal.

The deformed twin

For the deformed twin, it could not survive by itself, but through the blood vessels of its brother host, it could acquired nutrients to grow in size. After the sugery, Sanjay explained "Before the operation, life was very tough, but now I'm much better". Sanjay now leads a normal life without the burden of his parasitic twin that feeding off him for as long as 36 years!