ExtraordinaryPeople - The Boy With A Tumour On His Face

Season 4, Episode 9 RunTime: 47:39

Extraordinary People presents an update on the Indonesian boy named Novemthree, who underwent radical surgery in Taiwan to remove a huge, facial tumor. One year later, his tumors have grown and now his life is once again in danger from suffocation and starvation.

This astonishing film follows up on the case of Novemthree, the boy whose face was almost completely obscured by colossal tumours by the age of two. He is settling back into a life after groundbreaking surgery and beginning to regain both physical and emotional confidence, but a year on, the tumours are growing again. More surgery might kill him, but leaving the tumours unchecked is a fatal decision. Novemthree’s life hangs in the balance.

Back in November 2004, Five showed an inspiring documentary telling the story of five-year-old Novemthree, an Indonesian boy with a rare genetic disorder called Gigantiform Cementoma. The condition manifested itself in the largest facial tumours in recorded medical history. Doctors on the Indonesian Batam Island had neither the skill nor the facilities to treat him, and coming from a poor family it seemed unlikely that they would seek outside help. The boy was shunned by the frightened villagers who were totally unfamiliar with the condition. Help came in the form of Dr. David Lui, a Buddhist missionary who agreed to send Novemthree to a specialist unit in Taiwan. Novemthree arrived at the Buddhist Tzu Chi hospital in Hualien, Taiwan, in the spring of 2004, where he presented doctors with their greatest ever challenge. His illness had caused the tissue in his teeth to mutate into giant tumours and had destroyed most of the bones in his face. In a series of painstaking operations, most of the tumour was removed. Just enough of Novemthree’s face was left behind, which the doctors shaped into a new face and miraculously, his sight was restored. Doctors hoped that minor operations every few years would keep the tumour at bay.

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This film comes back to Novemthree’s story a year on, when sudden deterioration has thrown the long term schedule into disarray. Surgeon Dr Chen is shocked to see how much of his work has been lost. Novemthree is having difficulty breathing and eating and he must return to Hualien with his mother, Mindo.

When Novemthree and Mindo arrive at Hualien the doctors are impressed at his energy and mobility but cannot ignore the startling developments in his condition. A CT scan reveals that the tumour is re-growing at an astonishing rate in every section of his face, stunting his breathing and his vision. More major surgery is the only way to save Novemthree’s eyesight and save him from suffocation.

This is a turning point in Novemthree’s treatment. It has become clear that the tumour is more aggressive than anyone had imagined, and if Novemthree is to survive, he must resign himself to a lifetime in and out of surgery. “I feel sad and disappointed,” says Mindo, “because it means that my son will not be cured.”

It is down to Mindo and Siahaan, Novemthree’s father, to decide whether or not to let the doctors operate. To do so would mean a life of continual and painful treatment for Novemthtree, far away from home; to refuse might mean putting his life on the line. News of Novemthree’s condition reaches David Liu, the kindred spirit who discovered Novemthree in 2004; he rushes to Taiwan to be with him and Mindo. He empathises with the agonising dilemma Mindo and Siahaan face and he tries to help them with their heartbreaking choice. Finally, they decide to give the surgeons the go-ahead.

Concerns over Novemthree’s breathing during the procedure mean that a tracheotomy – a permanent breathing hole – needs to be cut into his throat. A tracheotomy would affect him for the rest of his life, as it would need to be carefully monitored, but without it the operation itself would be more risky. In the prevailing uncertainty, the operation is cancelled in the hopes that a solution can be found in the coming months.

Two months after Novemthree returns home, he passes away in the night. The doctors had given him the gift of normal life, albeit briefly: he was nearly seven. “Novemthree was a kind, wise and clever kid,” says Siahaan. “Whenever he was feeling ill, he never once complained to us. He simply took all his suffering on his own.”

NOTE:
Contains scenes of surgery some viewers may find disturbing.

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Extraordinary People - The Twins Who Share A Body

The Twins Who Share A Body. Named Abigail and Brittany Hensel. Although they are two completely separate people, these accomplished teens share a body and have just two arms and legs between them.

Born in 1990, the girls have been brought up in a small, tightly knit community in Minnesota, almost completely protected from prying eyes and inquisitive stares. To their friends and family, they are distinct people with very different personalities, needs, tastes and desires. But to the outside world they are a medical mystery – particularly given the fact that they can do virtually all the same things as their friends, including playing the piano, riding a bike, swimming and playing softball “Their personalities make them inspirational,” says their mother Patty. “They never give up; anything they want to do, they go out and do it.”

The medical world is keen to find out how two separate brains and nervous systems can work in such a perfectly co-ordinated way, but the twins and their family have always resisted non-essential medical tests. “The family want to treat them as though they are just like everyone else,” says Joy Westerdahl, the girls’ doctor, who admits that it is a mystery how their unique physiology functions.

As they enter adulthood, the twins are likely to leave the haven of their home town and face the wider world. In preparation for that time, they have taken part in this intimate documentary to show the world what it is like to be joined for life. The programme follows them as they pass their driving test and celebrate their 16th birthdays.

We also join them on a big summer trip to Texas. Here, they stay with family friend Tamara Vogt, whose own conjoined twins died as babies. Tamara is full of admiration for the pair. “They’ve given me strength from within that I didn’t even know I had,” she says. But even under the watchful eye of Tamara, this so-called holiday entails significant stress for the girls. They face stares from the outset, and are upset when, at a Major League baseball game, a news cameraman turns his camera on them. They let him film them but it ruins their day. “We don’t mind when people ask questions or talk to us, but we hate it when people take pictures and try to videocamera us,” they explain. “And we will throw a fit about it, and make them embarrassed.”

Despite the girls’ strong characters, their baseball-game encounter is a stark reminder of what lies ahead of them. How will the wider world react to two separate people joined in one body? And how will this reaction affect the girls?

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Extraordinary People - The Musical Genius

The Musical Genius - Season 5, Episode 2

26-year-old Derek Paraviccini is completely blind and partly autistic; he can’t tell left from right or count to ten. Derek now lives in a RNIB home for the blind but despite his profound disabilities, his brain is a perfectly programmed musical computer.

Derek was born three and a half months premature. His twin sister didn’t make it, and Derek technically died three times in the hospital. Miraculously, the tiny baby pulled through but his eyesight was destroyed by an oxygen overdose; as a result, he developed an astonishingly acute sense of hearing. Autistic people are often attracted to patterns and repetition, which can lead to some of them developing great gifts in fields such as mathematics or music. “When areas of the brain aren’t being used for their normal function, they are recruited for other functions,” says autism expert Dr Simon Baron-Cohen. With no visual cues to distract him and little emotional or intellectual recognition, Derek’s mind is free to concentrate almost entirely on music. He lives in a world of sound.

The Paraviccinis were astonished when, at the age of two, Derek started playing the piano. When they took him to school for the blind, little Derek heard a piano in the hallway and lunged for it. He broke away from his parents, pushed the poor child who was having a lesson off the stool and began playing with frightening vigour – with his fingers, with his elbows, with karate chops and occasionally with his nose. A musical prodigy was born, but to this day experts are baffled as to how Derek’s genius can coexist with such severe disability.

The RNIB’s Dr Adam Ockelford took Derek under his wing and became his mentor; he is one of the few people Derek trusts implicitly. We see Adam accompany Derek as he travels to the University of Sheffield, translating the pitch of a train engine into notes as he travels. At the University, a group of sceptical music scholars test his musical brain by playing him a Basque lullaby which he has never heard before. Of course, Derek amazes his audience by instantly playing the whole song perfectly; Derek remembers every single piece of music he’s ever heard. He is a true savant.

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Derek has the rare gift of universal perfect pitch, but the experts want to know exactly how many notes his brain can process. He is presented with a sequence of chords he has never heard before, played by an orchestra of 50 instruments; he still manages to repeat the sound by arpeggiating the chords.

Next, Derek is taken to Goldsmiths college where Professor Linda Pring fixes 32 electrodes to his skull in order to test how accurately and quickly his brain monitors sound. She plays him 64 musical phrases from Moonlight Sonata, half of which contain errors. His verbal responses are random, but his brain activity filters the wrong sounds with startling accuracy.

There’s no doubt that Derek has a gift, but can it really be called talent? Is he playing the piano with feeling or is he just a musical machine? Professor John Sloboda wants to measure Derek’s capacity for discerning emotion in music. When instructed, he can play a song in a happy or sad mood, but struggles when asked to play angrily; he merely growls over his playing. However, Jools Holland argues that the only way to judge is to listen to what Derek creates and the way he communicates to his audience. Derek is an exceptional musician because music is an extension of himself; he has an intuitive bond with the musical world.

Derek heads to Las Vegas. Here, he meets another musical savants named Rex Lewis-Clack, with whom he will duet in front of the biggest audience of his life. Will Derek rise to the challenge – and can he help the less experienced boy to play the concert of his life.

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Extraordinary People - The Boy Who Lived Before

Season 5, Episode 1

Ever since he could talk, Cameron has been telling stories of his life on Barra, a remote island in the Outer Hebrides, some 220 miles from his current home in Glasgow. He describes in detail his childhood on the island: the white house he lived in, the black-and-white dog he walked on the beach. He talks about his mother, seven siblings and his father, Shane Robertson, who died when he was run over by a car.

Nothing strange about all that. Except the fact that Cameron is only five years old now; his memories seem to be of a former life. Cameron’s stories have become increasingly more detailed since he first started telling them, and the shock of him insisting “I’m a Barra boy, I’m a Barra boy” has worn off a little. But his emotional attachment to his ‘Barra mum’ concerns his mother, and there’s clearly something going on in the poor kid’s head when he says, “My real barra dad doesn’t look left and right.” Intrigued by her enigmatic son, Cameron’s mother Norma has decided to investigate his claims.

Everyone who comes across Cameron is sceptical, but his stories are just so consistent. In her search to find a rational explanation for Cameron’s tales of his Barra childhood, Norma first visits psychologist Dr Chris French, editor of The Skeptic magazine. French suggests that Cameron might simply have acquired knowledge about Barra through TV or a family friend, and thus invented the stories himself.

Norma isn’t satisfied by this. Her next port of call is educational psychologist Karen Majors, who tells her that the way that Cameron describes his Barra world is similar to the way in which some children speak about imaginary places and people, except that Cameron really seems to believe that he has seen the things he describes first-hand; he also doesn’t seem to be able to control his ‘fantasy’ as other children do. Norma decides to investigate the possibility of reincarnation, contacting leading expert Dr Jim Tucker at the University of Virginia.

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Tucker has investigated countless statements of reincarnation from children across the world. One of the cases he refers to comes from the American mid-West. Gus Taylor was 18 months old when he first began claiming to be his own grandfather returned to his family, saying “I used to be big and now I’m a kid again.” At four he was given a photograph album in which he identified his grandfather as a young boy in a group school photo as well as his first car. He startled his parents with knowledge they couldn’t comprehend him having about an aunt who had been murdered. Gus talks about falling through a porthole. Cameron also frequently alludes to falling through a hole from Barra; he is very calm about death because he believes we come back.

Norma always promised Cameron they could go back to Barra and with Dr Tucker’s encouragement, she takes her son to the island to see if any of his ‘previous life’ tales of the island can be verified. She hopes it will give him some perspective. Cameron has often described watching aeroplanes land on the beach from the family house – true to his memory, the beach does double as a runway. “Mummy, I recognise every single bit,” he whispers.

They set off to try to find the house Cameron has talked about, which must be located at the north end of the island to provide the view of the beach he has described. They fail to find it. A local historian calls them to say that he has information about the Robertsons, a mainland family, and the address of the house where they used to spend the summer during the 1960s and 1970s. The usual talkative and animated Cameron is suddenly nervous, and when they visit the house he’s strangely subdued. The house and its environs have a lot in common with Cameron’s descriptions over the last three years.

Initially, the trip seems to be a success, but Norma and Dr Tucker’s research into the Robertson family comes to nothing; the trail is running cold. On returning to the mainland, Norma visits a geneaologist to find out more about the Robertson family and discovers a lady called Gilly, who as a child would have frequented the summer house at the same time that Cameron claims he did in his former life. Will their meeting confirm a connection? And, crucially, will Norma and her son learn anything about the identity of Shane Robertson, the man Cameron claims was once his father?

NOTE:

There is a spiritual power involved here. Making us believe that a person's soul travels to other individual - repeating his life all over or missing his previous life. This is NOT of God according to the Holy Scriptures. Remember King Saul, consulting to the witch of Endor to call Samuel the Prophet who was already dead? See: 1 Samuel 28

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Extraordinary People - A Hundred Orgasms A Day

Season 3, Episode 7.Duration: 46min. Looks at three women who suffer from a condition whereby they experience a state of constant physical sexual arousal. They talk about the effects it has had on their lives and at the cures they have tried to find.

Persistent Sexual Arousal is a little understood neurological condition where women suffer from constant physical arousal. We meet three women who talk about the devastating effect it has on their social lives and marriages, and their quest for a cure.

UK's Sarah Carmen, 24, is a 200-a-day orgasm girl who gets good, good, GOOD vibrations from almost anything. She suffers from Permanent Sexual Arousal Syndrome (PSAS), which increases blood flow to the sex organs. "Sometimes I have so much sex to try to calm myself down I get bored of it. And men I sleep with don't seem to make as much effort because I climax so easily."

She believes her condition was brought on by the pills. "Within a few weeks I just began to get more and more aroused more and more of the time and I just kept having endless orgasms. It started off in bed where sex sessions would last for hours and my boyfriend would be stunned at how many times I would orgasm. Then it would happen after sex. I'd be thinking about what we'd done in bed and I'd start feeling a bit flushed, then I'd become aroused and climax. In six months I was having 150 orgasms a day—and it has been as many as 200."

She and her boyfriend split— and new partners struggle to keep up with her sex demands. "Often, I'll want to wear myself out by having as many orgasms as I can so they stop and I can get some peace," she said.

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Extraordinary People - The Woman Who Lost 30 Stone

The Woman Who Lost 30 Stone - Season 4, Episode 6

In this episode of Extraordinary People, Connie Jackson of Nashville, Tennessee endures complicated surgery to removed excess skin from her body after losing more than 400 pounds!

How would it feel to shed two thirds of your body weight? "Like walking through gelatin," says Connie Jackson, the Nashville woman whose body symbolises the nightmarish events of her life and her agonising quest to stitch things back into shape.

This instalment of Five's groundbreaking documentary series follows Connie's quest to totally transform her body through surgery. As if the intense pain and life-threatening complications involved in undergoing highly invasive surgery weren't enough, a series of cruel twists of fate turn Connie's life upside-down and, almost literally, inside out.

At 45 stone Connie was reclusive, plagued with health problems and close to death. She needed a radical solution. After extreme stomach-reduction surgery, she managed to lose a staggering 30 stone but was left with sagging, baggy skin which had lost all of its elasticity. Connie has had enough of the gelatin. She has decided to go under the knife again for more life-threatening surgery to get rid, once and for all, of her former "fat girl" self.

"My life has been hell for 40 years”, says Connie. "I finally feel normal – and now I want to look normal."

Connie was obese by the age of seven due to a daily diet of three four-course meals. She suffered sexual abuse from a family friend, which caused her to eat even more, hoping that her tormentor would leave her alone if she was "fat and ugly." Connie suspected her sister Marsha was being abused as well - Marsha took the opposite route and became anorexic.

Connie's weight ballooned throughout her teens, stabilising at 22 stone in her twenties. She received another blow at 31; the death of her father from a heart attack pushed her down the slippery slope of extreme comfort eating and by 36 her weight had doubled.

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Morbidly obese and close to death, Connie stopped ovulating and suffered internal haemorrhaging. In hospital, Connie was shocked to discover she now weighed a hefty 582 pounds - over 40 stone. She realised that if she didn't take drastic action then she would die. But she was too big to exercise and was beyond dieting. Even the doctors seemed to have given up on her, until she met Dr Hazem Elaniny, an expert in the morbidly obese. Dr Elaniny advised radical surgery. Despite being told she had a 50% chance of dying on the operating table, Connie took the risk.

The first operation removed most of her stomach and much of her excess skin. From then on, Connie couldn't eat more than a few mouthfuls at a time, no matter how hungry she became. The length of the operation meant she was unconscious for 11 hours, and was at risk of getting an infection on her exposed flesh.

On waking, in agonising pain, Connie's life was turned upside down once again with the tragic news that her now estranged sister Marsha had died in a car crash. Distraught, much of Connie's emotional energy was taken up with dealing with this loss instead of getting better herself. However the tragedy also left her as the adoptive mother of Marsha's three year-old son Colin, which gave her some extra impetus to become healthy. She wanted to give him the start in life that she never had.

The weight loss following her operation left Connie with "wings"- over 20 pounds' worth of sagging, stretched skin from a body that had lost a staggering 70 % of its original weight. Returning to LA, she underwent a second, even more agonising operation to remove the excess weight from her thighs which required 400 stitches and a major blood transfusion. Some of her skin began to rot, as it had been denied blood flow for so long, and a skin graft was needed.

In order to morph into a svelte size 12, Connie now needs to have 20 pounds of excess skin removed. The programme follows the incredible shrinking woman as she travels to London for a consultation with surgeon Paul Harris. Will he clear her for more surgery, removing excess fat on her arms, and giving her breast transplants? If she is turned down, how will Connie take the news? Her journey to physical and psychological wellbeing is just beginning...

These days Connie reaps the cash rewards of her traumatic struggle by promoting her self-help book and products such as Queasy Pops and Chocoleans, among other quick-fix solutions to weight loss.

NOTE:
If you have a weak Stomach, you may not watch the movie. It has graphic flesh cutting on how the Doctors remove the fats from her body, ...again very GRAPHIC.

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Extra Ordinary People - The Woman Who Dives The Deepest

Season 1, Episode 2. Run time is 22:34min Heart-stopping documentary following free diver Tanya Streeter's attempt to dive 160 metres below sea level on a single breath. Defying science, Tanya can hold her breath for 6 minutes, while the average person can only manage 40 seconds. With so much at stake - a world record, a £50,000 investment by husband Paul and her very life - Tanya is under immense pressure. As she takes the plunge, a black-out, deep- sea narcosis and disorientation threaten to turn things tragically wrong.

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Tanya Streeter - The Caribbean Mermaid

Diving to the ocean floor on a single breath is an ancient skill among pearl and sponge fishermen, but only in the last 20 years has it become an internationally competitive sport. It requires superhuman levels of stamina and fitness. Tanya is in the Caribbean to try and regain one of her lost world records. One of her rivals, recently, reached a depth of 136m. Tanya's objective for this record attempt, is to reach a mind-boggling depth of 145m. Dive safety is, ultimately, the responsibility of manager and husband Paul who says "Accidents happen in free diving to people who don't practice correctly". Divers can black-out and around 50 divers die each year. The oxygen in the lungs can turn poisonous at depth making the diver feel drunk and the crushing water pressure can perforate vulnerable eardrums. Free Diving is not often the focus of media attention but the press are interested in a glamorous lady who may be dead within the next few weeks. Tanya is not keen on this type of attention as she would rather the diving made the news and not her apparent sex-appeal.

Her support team of divers need highly specialised diving equipment to operate at the depths Tanya will reach just by holding her breath. During 15 practice dives she will slowly build up her resistance to the pressure and pain of extreme depth. It was after accidentally discovering a talent for breath-hold diving while spear fishing she decided to take up the sport full-time.

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Just before one of her practice dives an oceanic white-tipped shark was spotted close to the dive boat. After a few minutes the shark disappeared and Tanya, despite her reservations, opted to proceed with the dive. Tanya descends on a weighted metal sled at a rate of 3m/s and by the time she reaches a depth of 50m her lungs have been squeezed, by the pressure, to the size of a clenched fist. The pressure on her ears causes intense pain which Tanya likens to having 2 sharp points thrust into the ears. Her ascent from the dive is with an air-filled balloon which can produce rapid pressure changes, so she will swim the last few metres unaided as it is at this depth that the pressure changes can be most severe. Tanya trains intensively for a record attempt. Dr. Peter Wilmshurst a Diving Physiologist says: "In theory it should be impossible for any free diver to dive beyond about 30m". Peter Sheard a Biomedical Scientist adds: "For the most part we can take any fit, healthy individual and get them up to four and a half minute breath-hold. To get into the six, seven, and even eight minute breath-holds, you're looking at a very exceptional person, they're doing things that we cannot fully explain".

As part of her training, Tanya attends one of the leading centres for diving medicine in Liverpool, England. She is put in a specially designed tank to simulate the pressures of the dive. She is accompanied in the tank by Frederique, a world-class free diver, for safety reasons. The test dive to 100m is aborted at 80m as this is beyond Frederique's pain threshold.

5 days before the record attempt, Tanya is diagnosed with a badly bruised eardrum and a sinus infection. This is a major concern for the whole team. Even 2 days before the attempt, Tanya reports pain from her ears when just below the surface of the water. Only 24 hours before the record attempt and Tanya's ears are feeling better, so she and husband Paul must decide on what depth they will go for. They decide on a very ambitious 160m or 525ft which, if successful, would make her the deepest free diver, man or woman.

On the day of the attempt, minutes before the dive, Tanya is packing her lungs with as much air as possible when she suddenly slumps forward, unconscious. She has hyper-ventilated, but she recovers quickly and the judges give her permission to go on with the dive. It's the worst possible start, but the dive begins and after over two and a half minutes she reaches the depth of 160m. There is a problem, she has lost awareness, nitrogen narcosis has taken a hold. She does not know to release the catch that will return her to the surface. One of the support divers tries to reach her, but is exceeding his safe dive depth limit. Finally, Tanya releases the catch and rockets back toward the surface. She is in danger of passing out, but cannot be assisted as the judges must see her to be conscious for the record to stand.

After an agonizing few seconds, she is seen to be fine and the judges confirm the record is good. Tanya Streeter has set a new world free diving record!

NOTE:

6 weeks after Tanya Streeter set the world record, her French rival Audre Mestre tried to break it. SHE DIED IN THE ATTEMPT - Oct 12 at age 28. She was pulled out the water foaming from the mouth and bleeding 9 minutes, 44 seconds after plunging to a depth of 171-meters (561-feet) on a 91-kilogram (200-pound) weighted sled.

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Extra Ordinary People - The Little Mermaid

Series 1 Episode 14 - The Little Mermaid
First aired: 10/9/2008

The 45min documentary series exploring remarkable stories of human experience continues. This instalment features a girl born with a rare and debilitating defect which gives her a mermaidlike appearance. As she prepares to undergo surgery to have her legs separated, the girl’s parents agonise over their decision to allow the risky procedure to go ahead.

Shiloh Pepin suffers from sirenomelia or ‘mermaid syndrome’, a rare condition that means her legs have been fused together since birth. In most cases, a sirenomelia sufferer dies at birth or soon after, but Shiloh has defeated the odds in making it to her eighth birthday. It has not been an easy journey for her and her parents, Leslie and Elmer. As Shiloh was born with only one kidney and no lower colon, bladder, uterus or genitals, she has already endured years of medical treatment in her short life.

Shiloh’s mother, Leslie, describes her daughter as “an amazing young lady – bubbly and funny”. In fact, she puts Shiloh’s long life down to her fighting spirit. Shiloh loves dancing, and even attends classes. Her doctor since birth, nephrologist Matt Hand, says, “We’ve had to ask other doctors to help her and they always say no. And we always know that all they’ll have to do is meet her, and they’re not going to turn her down.” Two years ago, Shiloh’s kidney function shut down completely and she was put on dialysis.

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Eventually, the harrowing treatment could not be administered as doctors could no longer find a suitable place to attach the machine onto her small body. The last resort was a kidney transplant, but it was a short-term solution because Shiloh’s body quickly outgrew the new organ. When the second kidney also failed, Shiloh was forced to go back on dialysis once again.

In August 2007, Dr Hand performed a second kidney transplant. The operation was particularly crucial, because the kidney needed to be accepted by Shiloh’s body in order for her to be healthy enough to have separation surgery. The two other mermaid syndrome sufferers in the world have both had the operation, but doctors had greater concerns about Shiloh’s case because her body was already so imbalanced.

As Dr Hand waited to see whether Shiloh was fit for surgery, Shiloh’s parents were at an impasse. While Leslie was eager for her daughter to have the surgery and live a normal life, Elmer was not sure there was a need. The house-husband wondered whether his daughter’s fused limbs were really a disability. Would more quality time with their daughter reap greater rewards than a potentially life-threatening operation?

NOTE:

Shiloh Pepin is only one of three surviving sirenomelia (mermaid syndrome) patients who do not have the usual kidney and bladder complications. One of them is Milagros Cerrón Arauco of Peru born in 2004. Although most of Milagros’ internal organs, including her heart and lungs, are in perfect condition, she was born with serious internal defects, including a deformed left kidney and a very small right one located very low in her body. In addition, her digestive, urinary tracts and genitals share a single tube. The other one is Tiffany Yorks of the United States, born in 1988, who underwent successful surgery in order to separate her legs. She is the longest surviving sirenomelia patient to date.

Watch or download Milagros Carreon who survived sirenomelia.

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Extraordinary People - The Original Rain Man

Season 4, Episode 4 Kim Peek - Savant (The Original Rain Man)

Preceding the savant Daniel Tammet by several years, Kim Peek is the real life Rain Man whom the Dustin Hoffman character was based in the movie. Described as a confounding mixture of disability and brilliance, Kim is in love with knowledge. Kim Peek is probably the world's most famous savant. Kim was diagnosed as being mentally retarded at birth, but with father Fran's unflagging support he has developed a memory that is without equal.

Born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. Kim has lived here all of his life. The local library is Kim's favourite place in the world. Kim devours books on anything and everything, as many as eight in a day. He reads at a phenomenal rate, a page that may take you or I three minutes will take Kim about 10 seconds. He reads the left page with his left eye and the right page with his right eye and will retain about 98% of it. He has 15 subject areas but about the only thing he can't do is, he can't reason out mathematical problems.

In 1951, doctors wanted to place Kim in a mental hospital named American Fork. Fran was determined that Kim would not go to an institution, he would be raised at home as a normal child. Fran and Kim's mother parted in 1975, leaving Fran as Kim's sole carer. Fran is now almost 80 years old. Kim says "I wasn't supposed to make it past about 14, and yet here I am at 54, a celebrity!".

As a child, Kim was very introverted. It wasn't until he was 37 when he met Dustin Hoffman, that he could look into someone's face. Fran relates that "Dustin Hoffman said to me, you have to promise me one thing about this guy, share him with the world. And pretty soon it got so that nobody was a stranger to him, they were people, and so was he". Barry Morrow, the Rain Man screenwriter says of Kim: "I love the way he's flowered, it belies the myth that people don't change, especially people with developmental disabilities".
Kim in Profile

Fran took Dustin Hoffman's advice to share Kim with the world. The once introverted Kim has now appeared in front of more than 2 million people, all eager to test his genius with obscure questions.

Kim's gifts come at a price. Like all savants, Kim is an acutely different man, sometimes understanding Kim can be a challenge. Kim can become very agitated when trying to understand a new concept, but Fran has phenomenal patience and will calm Kim by gently changing the subject to something Kim is happier with.

Looking after Kim is more than a full-time job, Fran jokes that he needs 30 hours a day and 10 days a week. Kim knows how essential his dad is to him: "My dad and I share the same shadow!"

This year is a landmark year for Fran and Kim, a fact that Kim is unusually aware of. He says "Things will really heat up this winter, with my dad approaching 80. Only one other member of my dad's immediate family has ever reached that mark, it's my Grandma, which makes this year so important to us". So this year the Peek's have set themselves a mission to find out everything they can about Kim's brain. They are going to California to meet some of world's foremost neuro-scientists to find some answers while they're still together.

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Most savants have only one dominating interest, Kim seems to soak up everything. His interests range from boxing, to politics, to the British Monarchy.

Dr. Darold Treffert is an authority on Savant Syndrome and consulted on the Rain Man movie. "About once a century comes along a truly stellar savant, an already rare condition, and Kim is in that category" explains Dr. Treffert. "Kim's memory is not only deep, it is also very wide which is very unique among savants" he continues.

Neurologist Dr. Elliott Sherr

What is it that makes Kim's brain work in such an extraordinary way, and do his disabilities, in some way, enhance his memory? In California, Kim has been invited to take part in a study at the University of California. Neurologist Dr. Elliott Sherr begins by going over Kim's background. This is something of a sore point as the first neurologist Kim saw, when he was only a baby, took 5 minutes to dismiss him as a hopeless case who should institutionalised. Dr. Sherr was to discover that Kim had learned to read by the age of two. While this was not a formal neuropsychological assessment, it was plain that Kim had difficulty following directions.

Psychologist Dr. Rita Jeremy gives him a standardised intelligence test to see where he stands in relation to the norm. She discovers that Kim has trouble with tasks that require new thinking and for which he can't call upon facts from his memory. His results are wildly erratic but Dr. Jeremy is philosophical and decides that a standardised test cannot apply as Kim is most definitely not standard.

The following day, Neuroradiologist Dr. Pratik Mukherjee will use Diffusion Tensor Imaging, a ground-breaking way of mapping how the brain functions, to look inside Kim's head. This reveals that the two halves of his brain are not joined in the normal manner, a condition known as agenesis of the Corpus Callosum.~ Neuroradiologost Dr. Pratik Mukherjee

The fibres that should have made this connection are travelling in different, peculiar directions. Has the way Kim's brain rewired itself to compensate for the missing Corpus Callosum account for his incredible memory?

Next, Professor V.S. Ramachandran wants to test a long-standing theory that savants are not capable of conceptual thinking. Professor Ramachandran and his students run a number of word association tests which appear to prove that Kim simply accepts words at face value without processing them in any way. He takes metaphors literally. All of which seems to back up the theory.

Kim Peek may be the greatest savant we have ever known, he is certainly the best known and more than entitled to be referred to as a mega-savant. He can recall thousands of zip codes, phone codes, dates and countless facts and figures. He has a truly awesome memory. Is he autistic? Probably, but like Daniel Tammett, not in the conventional sense. He was originally diagnosed with autism but this was later changed.