Heard from the family. Bro says his cell phone was drained, and the momster flaked it. We’ll try again next week.

Sunday, I’ll be putting in a quick visit to the RenFest with the Big Kahuna. I’m actually looking more toward the one in Vizcaya, next month. Hm…Maybe I’ll find some more fun trinkets for my beloved there.

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Speaking of loved ones….

(-via beaucoupkevin and scans_daily)

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Become a God or Goddess. by zerogirl
Name:
God/Goddess of	The Unknown
Element:	Water
Animal Companion:	Beetle
Weak against	Lightning
Weapon:	Trident
Created with quill18‘s MemeGen 2.0!

Newt’s not a Beetle!

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Two-Headed Baby To Have Surgery (pictures not for the squeamish)

A Dominican infant born with a second head will undergo a risky operation Friday when surgeons try to sever the appendage and prevent hemorrhaging from shared arteries.

Led by a Los Angles-based neurosurgeon who successfully separated Guatemalan twins, a team will spend about 13 hours removing Rebeca Martinez’s second head, which has a partially formed brain, ears, eyes and lips.

Eighteen surgeons, nurses and doctors will take several rotations to cut off the undeveloped tissue, clip the veins and arteries and close the skull of the seven-week-old baby using a bone graft from another part of her body.

“We know this is a delicate operation,” father Franklyn Martinez, 28, told The Associated Press this week. “But we have a positive attitude.”

Cure International, a Lemoyne, Pennsylvania-based charity that gives medical care to disabled children in developing countries, is paying for the surgery and follow-up care.

To counteract heavy blood loss during the operation, doctors have collected nearly 4 gallons of Rebeca’s O-positive blood. The operation is risky because the two heads share arteries.

Dr. Jorge Lazareff, director of pediatric neurosurgery at the University of California at Los Angeles’ Mattel Children’s Hospital, will lead the operation along with Dr. Benjamin Rivera, a neurosurgeon at Cure International. Lazareff led a team that successfully separated Guatemalan twin girls in 2002.

After the surgery, Rebeca will spend 10 days in the hospital with 24-hour care. Doctors say if the surgery goes well she won’t need physical therapy and will develop as a normal child.

Rebeca was born Dec. 17 with the undeveloped head of her twin. Twins are born conjoined at the head when an embryo splits to make identical twins and then stops growing, leaving them fused. Such twins are rare, accounting for one of every 2.5 million births.

Parasitic twins like Rebeca are even more rare. They occur when one stops developing, leaving a smaller, partially formed twin dependent on the other.

Rebeca is the eighth documented case in the world of craniopagus parasiticus, said Dr. Santiago Hazim, medical director at Cure International’s Center for Orthopedic Specialties in the Dominican capital, Santo Domingo, where the surgery will be performed.

All the other documented infants died before birth, making it the first known surgery of its particular kind, Lazareff and Hazim said.

Hazim said the surgery must be done now so the pressure of Rebeca’s other brain doesn’t prevent her from developing.

Rebeca shares blood vessels and arteries with her second head, which gets nourishment from what she eats. Although only partially developed, the mouth on her second head moves when Rebeca is being breast-fed and her eyelids sometimes twitch. Tests indicate activity in her second brain.

Martinez and his 26-year-old wife, Maria Gisela Hiciano, say doctors told them Rebeca would be born with a tumor on her head but none of the tests showed a second head developing.

Martinez works at a tailor’s shop. Hiciano is a supermarket cashier. Together they make about $200 a month. They have two other children, aged 4 and 1.

Lazareff says Rebeca’s chances of survival are good. Still, he refuses to make a prognosis.

“This is not a casino for betting, it’s a human being,” he said. “We’ll do everything we can to make this successful.”