He arrived at the hospital with pain, vomiting, and extreme weight loss, but the doctors ended up finding something no one expected. Narendra Kumar, an 18-year-old from Uttar Pradesh, India, had a 2,5-kilo mass inside his abdomen that turned out to be his parasitic twin.
The condition is known as foetus in fetu and occurs when one twin is absorbed by the other during pregnancy, but continues developing inside their body. It is so rare that very few cases have been documented in the world.
In this case, the doctors found skin, hair, teeth, bones, a head-like structure, chest, and spine. In other words, it was not just a stomachache… it was one of those medical stories that is hard to process.
For years, Narendra had lived with discomfort that no one could fully explain. But when the symptoms worsened and he began to lose weight in an alarming way, the tests finally revealed what was happening inside his body.
The surgery was a success and the doctors managed to remove the mass completely. Even so, the case drew the attention of specialists around the world, because it is not every day that someone arrives at the hospital thinking they have a digestive problem and ends up discovering that they had been carrying their twin inside their abdomen since before birth.