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팔다리 8개 소녀, '이제 학교도 다녀요'

영국 데일리 메일이 팔다리 8개를 가지고 태어난 소녀의 최근 근황을 28일(현지시간) 전하면서 다시 한번 국제적인 관심을 끌고 있다. 보도에 따르면 분리수술에 성공한 락슈미 타트마는 최근 학교에 등교하기 시작했으며, 교복도 입고 오빠와 크리켓도 즐기며 여느 아이들처럼 평범한 일상을 보내고 있는 것으로 알려졌다. 지난 2005년 인도 비하르 지역 빈민촌에서 태어난 락슈미는 출생 당시 8개의 팔다리를 가진 기형아였는데 그녀의 부모는 팔이 8개인 힌두여신의 이름을 따 락슈미(Larkshmi)로 이름을 지었다. 이 지역의 주민들도 소녀를 부와 다산을 상징하는 여신의 환생이라고 여겼다. 그러나 여신을 닮은 8개의 팔다리는 값비싼 대가를 치르게 했다. 락슈미는 걷기는커녕 앉을 수조차 없었고 결국 3년 전인 2007년에 27시간의 대수술을 거쳐 팔다리 제거 수술에 성공했다. 이때 동원된 의사 수가 30여명에 이른다.

The British newspaper Daily Mail reported on Jan. 27 that Lakshmi Tatma, an Indian toddler who was born with a unique body - eight limbs and two torsos fused at the hips, has grown up and started school.

According to the news report, two years after a ground-breaking operation to separate her from a parasitic twin, Lakshmi is a lively and bubbly four-year-old.

She loves playing cricket with her older brother, has a tendency to boss around her newfound friends and remains firmly a daddy's girl.

'When I think of the way she was, never in a million years would Lakshmi have been able to go to school or have the life she does today,' said her mother Poonam, 26.

'All the things she's capable of now were impossible two years ago.

'I often try to think what she might be like today if she hadn't had the operation - she couldn't even sit up before and now she runs around like other children.'

Born in a dusty farming village in India's poorest state, Lakshmi was revered as a deity and worshipped from birth.

Villagers, who believed she was the reincarnation of the Hindu goddess of wealth and fertility, would seek her blessing daily and leave gifts at her bedside.

But Lakshmi's resemblance to her mythological namesake came at a terrible price. She could not walk, stand, or even sit.

The little girl was joined to a headless parasitic twin that had stopped developing in her mother's womb. Doctors were convinced she could not have survived into adulthood.

Now fully recovered from the 27-hour operation to save her, Lakshmi is almost unrecognisable from her former self.

Beneath the surface, however, lurk a series of medical problems that threaten her future and will require years of surgery.