A Teratoma Tumor Was Supposed To Be My Twin.
I woke up one morning with a horrible fever and excruciating pains in my lower back. Even after I took a fever reducer and pain medication neither subsided. At 15, I had been healthy my whole life. I had suffered the flu a few times over the years but this was different. My body was failing and I felt it. I would have never anticipated what was really going on inside of me in a million years.
My fever not only didn't go away from medication but had gotten dangerously high. I don’t know if it was from the pain, fever, or both, but I even started hallucinating and saw Jesus Christ. I was Wiccan at the time so that in itself freaked me the hell out! After the fact, my mother told me I was asking Jesus to help me and kept repeating I didn’t want to die. This is obviously where everything becomes fuzzy.
After seeing my primary doctor, I was sent to the university hospital. My doctor assumed I only had a severe kidney infection. I wish that was the case. An MRI revealed that I had a large mass in my torso that needed to be removed ASAP. I always had a protruding belly, but I never had discomfort so I assumed that's just how my body distributed its weight. Never would I have guessed I had a tumor the size of a football growing inside of me!
In about 1 in 500,000 people, a very rare type of teratoma can appear, called fetus in fetu (fetus within a fetus).
This teratoma can have the appearance of a malformed fetus. It’s made up of living tissue. But without the support of a placenta and an amniotic sac, the undeveloped fetus has no chance of development.
One theory explains the fetus in fetu teratoma as the remains of a twin that was unable to develop in the womb, and was encompassed by the body of the surviving child.
I had to receive an C-section operation because of the size of the tumor. The tumor alone ended up being 10lbs, almost beating the world record that year which was 15. My appendix, an ovary, and fallopian were removed also since the tumor engulfed them. They explained my tumor was from when I was conceived and that I was supposed to be an identical twin. I was in complete shock and disbelief. Hearing that it had hair, teeth and nails was extremely disturbing, to say the least.
In the end, I was left with more questions than answers. What would my life had been if my twin had survived. Who would she have been? Would she have had all the qualities I thought I was missing? I had always felt alone in the world and would have loved having another me to share it with. My mother once said the world wouldn’t have been able to handle two Alishahs. That’s another thing I have questioned throughout the years as well.