INLSA

Joshua William's worried parents Mershell and Marco Wallace.

Avery Carpenter

MERSHELL Wallace realised that something was different during her pregnancy – but she didn’t expect that “different” would mean nearly “double”. On January 23, when she gave birth to a boy with a partially formed conjoined twin attached to his back, Wallace was stunned.

“It did not show up on my ultrasound,” she said.

“Even when the boy came out of me, I thought it was one.

“The doctors immediately said ‘there is something on his spine’.” That turned out to be a complicated mass of nerve tissue with a limb-like appearance. It is not a fully-formed twin or a parasitic weaker twin – it is nerve tissue that may have formed into a twin if the boy had not been born prematurely at 33 weeks.

Her baby, born at Groote Schuur Hospital, was named Joshua William Wallace after his grandfather. He is now being treated at Red Cross Children’s Hospital.

The critical surgery to free baby Joshua from the complex nerve tissue will be performed by

a multi-disciplinary team of surgeons.

Red Cross Children’s Hospital said in a statement yesterday that the mass “shared no vital organs with Joshua and did not cause him any pain”.

Joshua is being treated with antibiotics for a possible skin infection, and a date has not yet been set for the surgery.

“It will

most likely be a series of surgeries as the boy gets older,” said Red Cross communications officer Lauren O’Connor-May. “It is a very complex situation because the mass is living and shares nerves with the patient.”

Specific surgical procedures will not be disclosed before the hospital informs the family. When the Cape Times visited the Wallace home in Ottery yesterday, Mershell Wallace said she was going to the hospital to speak to the doctors.

Late yesterday afternoon, O’Connor-May said the family had not come to the hospital.

There is a history of twins in the Wallace family. Mershell miscarried twins when she was only 14 and her husband, Marco, has five sets of twins on his side of the family.

Wallace said: “This pregnancy did not feel like twins, but it looked different.” She has two other children, aged two and six. Wallace’s mother, Mary Jacobs, said Wallace was “no stranger” to unusual events.

“She was bitten by a deadly scorpion when she was just 11 and she lived.”

Earlier yesterday, Wallace believed Joshua had a 50 percent chance. Later, things looked more optimistic.

The Wallaces have also had a tough time getting to the hospital. Both Mershell and Marco are unemployed and have been borrowing money for taxi fare.

They cannot even begin to think about paying hospital bills. “We were just given R100 from social workers for taxi fare, but that is the first that we’ve gotten from them. I have been going to the hospital often,” said Wallace. “I am feeling everything at once.”

avery.carpenter@inl.co.za