Blogpost # 7: Sirenomelia, Becoming A Mermaid

Have you ever dreamed to be a mermaid someday? Can we really breathe under water for a very long time?  Is there a possibility for us humans to be a mermaid?

When we think of mermaids, what comes into our mind? Beautiful, has a golden voice, sexy and fit like a princess. right? But what if these happen in real life? Is it still good to see?

Mermaid Syndrome, which is also known as Sirenomelia, is a disease where the feet combined together which makes the patient unable to walk. As far as I know, these diseases commonly happen in babies or infants when born. Let’s define it in a better way.

For us to understand it further, a certain article in healthline.com entitled “Sirenomelia” by Randall Stuart, Sirenomelia is a lethal birth defect of the lower body characterized by apparent fusion of the legs into a single lower limb. Other birth defects are always associated with Sirenomelia, most commonly abnormalities of the kidneys, large intestines, and genitalia.

Sirenomelia is very lethal most specially to the new born babies because it occurs during birth. The buzzle.com has an article that discusses about the Sirenomelia entitled “Mermaid Syndrome Facts” which was written by Sayali Bedekar Patil. In this article, she talks about some facts and important things to know about the said disease.

Facts

-It is such a rare birth defect that only 1 in every 70,000 births is known to have it.

-There are only over 300 (reported) live births of such babies.

-More often than not, the condition proves fatal for the baby. In fact, very few survive it even after surgery.

-Half the cases are usually seen as stillbirths, while it is hundred times more likely to occur in identical twins.

-This disorder was initially mistaken with Caudal Regression Syndrome, but was later reiterated as an independent Sirenomelia Mermaid Syndrome.

Defects

Sirenomelia is caused by the abnormal formation of the umbilical cord blood vessels. The normal fetuses have two umbilical arteries and one umbilical vein while Sirenomelia fetus has just one and the normal growth of the fetus is not possible. This artery steals the blood and nutrition from the lower body of the fetus and diverts it back up to the placenta. Due to this malnutrition, the lower limbs of the fetus fail to develop and separate into two limbs. The lower side malnutrition can also results in malformed kidneys and internal or external genitalia. Also, the large intestine can misplace itself within the abdomen of the baby and sometimes even the anus has no opening.

Causes

-Scientists and medical professionals still don’t know the real causes of this birth defect in newborns babies. But there are theories these are the possible causes why Sirenomelia disease occurs.

-Illness suffered during pregnancy, either by the expecting mother or directly by the fetus

-Poor prenatal care by the expectant mother

-Genetic abnormalities either in the genes of the mother or the genes of the father

Treatments

According to an article entitled “Mermaid Syndrome Causes Facts and Syndrome” by Susan Yoga on shopeastwest.com, the only option for the Mermaid Syndrome is a surgery. But going through surgery is very risky for the newborn. The baby might not survive the operation because she’s too young to take a very heavy surgery.

Survivors

Sirenomelia might be a very lethal disease, but there are cases where newborn babies who go through certain surgeries survived. Going back to the article of Sayali Bedekar Patil on buzzle.com, here are the known survivors in the entire medical history.

Few years ago there were three survivors but in 2009, one of them died and that was Shiloh Pepin.

Shiloh Pepin was born in 1999 and recently died in October 2009, after defying her doctors, who claimed that she would not live past a few days from her birth. The girl lived to be ten years old and can be given the credit for spreading more awareness by appearing on television shows like the Oprah Winfrey Show. A certain article entitled “Born with Fused Legs”, written by Bob Brown on abcnews.go.com, discussed more about the life of Shiloh during her surgeries and operations. The two survivors left are Milagros Cerron and Tiffany Yorks.

 
Milagros Cerron was born on April 27, 2004 in Peru and is also a courageous survivor of the mermaid syndrome. She also had numerous other complications to go with her already severe condition. She was not only born with just one kidney, but it was later found that both her digestive tract and genitals were one single tube. Like the 'miracle' that her name means in Spanish, this girl born in a poor Spanish family received all her medical treatment at the expense of the Lima Government. This Spanish girl was left almost mute by the intense medical treatment that she went through, but she has, today, overcome that trauma, too. Another baby, like Milagros, named Tiffany Yorks went through several operations and luckily survived.

Tiffany Yorks is the oldest survivor of mermaid syndrome and was born with the defect in 1980. Unfortunately, she had more problems than just fused legs. She was born without a bladder which had to be surgically put in. She had about five surgeries before she was one, to separate her legs and correct her other internal problems. She has had many more surgeries all throughout her youth, for her mermaid syndrome has caused her many problems even after the ones she had corrected earlier.

Now that we have enough knowledge about Mermaid Syndrome, do you think we are connected to mermaids?

Based on my opinion, Mermaid Syndrome or Sirenomelia is not one of the possible causes for us to become a mermaid. If you can see, the causes and defects of having a mermaid syndrome don’t have connections to have characteristics of a mermaid. Even if the mermaid babies have fused legs, their tails don’t have scales like the fish or mermaids. The reason why their legs are combined is because of some complications during pregnancy of their mother.