Avery Carpenter

MERSHELL Wallace realised something was different during her pregnancy, but she didn’t expect that “different” would nearly mean “double”.

On January 23, when she gave birth to a boy with what initially appeared to be a conjoined twin attached to his back, Wallace was stunned.

“It didn’t show up on my ultrasound,” she said. “Even when Joshua was born, I thought it was one baby. The doctors immediately said “there is something on his spine”.

That something turned out to be a complicated mass of nerve tissue with a limb-like appearance.

The mass is not a partially formed twin, nor a parasitic weaker twin – it is nerve tissue.

The baby, born prematurely at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, was named Joshua William Wallace after his grandfather.

Baby Joshua was born prematurely at 33 weeks and is now being treated at Red Cross Children’s Hospital in Cape Town.

Critical surgery to remove the complex nerve tissue will test the minds of even the most accomplished doctors.

A multidisciplinary team of surgeons are set to perform the operation to free baby Joshua from the mass.

Red Cross Children’s Hospital said yesterday that the mass shared no vital organs with Joshua and did not cause him any pain. He is being treated with antibiotics for a possible skin infection.

The date of the surgery is still to be determined.

“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 complex situation because the mass is living and shares nerves with the infant.”

Specific surgical procedures will not be disclosed until the hospital first informs the Wallace family, she added.

The baby’s mother yesterday said she was going to the hospital to speak to the doctors.

The Wallace family have a history of twins born in their family. Wallace miscarried twins, 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 her daughter was no stranger to surviving rare instances: “She was bitten by a scorpion when she was just 11 and survived.”

The Wallaces have had a tough time managing their hospital visits.

The couple are both unemployed and have been borrowing money for taxi fares.

“We were given R100 by social workers for taxi fare, but that is the first money we have been given by them.

“I have been going to the hospital often,” Wallace said, adding that she was feeling quite overwhelmed by it all.