I'm procrastinating. It's pretty much what I do best. But I had to write about this, and it's something just thrown together, not from a word document. If you know me, you know I'm secretly addicted to TLC shows and specials, particularly the ones involving drugs, medicine, operations, prisons, addiction of any kind or bodies. And possibly some of the one's about food. So when I saw that there was a new special about a boy with 8 limbs on last night, I was pumped to watch it. I justified this by saying I was going to write about it for the blog, and continued to study while it was on. It's also no secret that part of the reason I love watching these shows is because I hate them so much. I usually disagree with what they're saying, getting annoyed and often yelling at the TV. This show was no exception.
A six year old boy was born with a "parasitic twin", growing from his abdomen in the form of legs, arms, a butt and possibly a penis, as well as a large hernia. The entire tone of the show was about "saving" this "poor boy in India", and we were supposed to think the family members who didn't want to operate on the boy were crazy or uninformed about the miracles of modern medicine. And it's true, I did feel awful for the boy because medical people kept trying to touch his protruding limbs and he kept screaming, crying and trying to avoid being touched. No one seemed to be explaining to him why the doctors were trying to touch him, which is bound to be scary as hell for anyone. Eventually they just drugged him up when he kept squirming and crying so they could poke and prod as they pleased. I understand that sometimes this is necessary, but it just seemed like a case where they drugged a kid to shut him up, never telling him what was "wrong" with him. He was supposed to gather this for himself by the way people stared at him in public, or when other people tried to touch his twin, I guess.
He did get the surgery to remove the hernia and the twin. The limbs and the other external parts were removed as well as some other parts of the twin that were growing inside, like parts of a bowel, some body fat belonged to the twin. (They could tell by the way it grew, it wasn't attached internally to him.) Surgically, it looks like they did a beautiful job, the little boy was fine and even playing on a tricycle within a couple weeks. His parents cried and were so grateful that their son was fine and now "normal". I'm not completely stone cold; I can get that his parents wanted everything for their child including a safe surgery. But was it medically necessary? The show gave no indication that it altered his health in any way; the discourse used in the show was a very protectionist one. "We have to save this boy and make him normal", which says more about his life socially and culturally than it does medically.
The boy called his twin "his baby". I wonder if he took home some of the parts in jars. I know I would try to. Or at least demand to see them when I woke up. Did he have an emotional attachment to the limbs and body parts? I can imagine so... they were live body parts, very much a part of his life. They contained blood and fat, and were there for his entire life. I just hope he's happy when he's older about the decision his parents made for him.
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