Thirty-one-year-old Tanya Angus from Nevada in the USA, who was once a pretty and popular young woman, now stands at 6ft 8ins and weighs almost 32 stone. Tanya is already one of the tallest and heaviest women on the planet. Alarmingly, she is still growing, and lives in agonising pain. Now doctors say she is the only woman in the world whose growth cannot be halted by medication. This Bodyshock special follows Tanya's extraordinary journey as she struggles to come to terms with her unstoppable growth and joins the world's leading doctors in a race against time to ultimately save her life. Acromegalic Gigantism is an extremely rare condition that causes the body to grow to massive proportions, a condition that can transform anyone into a real-life giant. With unprecedented access to other Acromegaly sufferers, Bodyshock uncovers the enormous toll this unpredictable affliction takes on the human body and shows the groundbreaking technology top neurosurgeons are utilising in the battle to stop the growth. The programme follows the astonishing lives of three people as they cope with this colossal growth, and medical experts explain the science behind this little-known yet life-threatening disease.
Three-year-old twins Krista and Tatiana Hogan are conjoined at the head. It is usual to carry out separation surgery on conjoined twins as early as possible, but Krista and Tatiana can never be separated. Bodyshock presents a rare and moving portrait of a family determined to keep their twins together and give them a fulfilling life. The filmmakers follow the family as the girls make progress through one of the most difficult years of their lives, and have unexpectedly positive effects on the rest of the family. Most poignantly, doctors finally discover whether these extraordinary little girls can see through each other's eyes, as their mother believes.
Shiloh Pepin, from Maine, USA, was born with Sirenomelia or 'mermaid syndrome': an extremely rare congenital disease meaning her legs were fused together below the hips. She was born without a rectum or genitals, almost no large intestine and just a small piece of her kidney. Shiloh was given just days to live. Knowing her life could be cut short at any moment, her parents, Leslie and Elmer, devoted their lives to caring for her. Against all odds she survived and in 2009 she celebrated her tenth birthday, a milestone doctors said she would never reach. Filmed over six months that would change her family's lives forever, this is the unforgettable story of an ordinary family living with an extraordinary condition.
China's 'Elephant Man', Huang Chuncai, tells his own shocking story as he undergoes surgery to remove life-threatening tumours weighing 20kg that have caused him a lifetime of suffering. As a small child, Huang developed a small facial swelling. Now 31, his features have been destroyed and his body wracked by the tumours, which make up half his body weight. Bodyshock follows Huang as he travels to one of China's leading cancer hospitals for the surgery that he hopes will allow him to live a normal life, but which also carries terrible risks.
Bodyshock revisits Lakshmi Tatma, the girl who was born with eight limbs, a year after she underwent a life-saving operation to remove her half-formed conjoined twin's arms and legs. When Lakshmi was born with four arms and four legs, she was immediately worshipped by her parents and others in their poverty-stricken village as the reincarnation of Lakshmi, the eight-legged goddess of prosperity and wealth. But they faced a dilemma: only a groundbreaking operation to remove the conjoined twin's limbs could save their daughter's life, but the same gruelling procedure might easily kill her. In a modern hospital in Bangalore, which seems a million miles from their hut in the village and the superstitions of their religion, they agreed for their daughter to undergo the 18-hour operation. A year later, she has not only survived but flourished. This Bodyshock Special finds out how Lakshmi, who is now three, is developing, and what further operations and treatment she still needs to develop as normally as possible. The programme also returns with her to her village, where some believe the worst droughts in 50 years were caused by the operation, which they believe removed Lakshmi's goddess powers to protect them from disasters.
This Bodyshock Special features 13-year-old Twinkle Dwivedi who, for nearly two years, has inexplicably cried tears of blood. The spontaneous bleeding, which happens almost daily, also comes from her head, hands and feet. The programme follows Twinkle and her mother as they travel from their home in northern India to explore the cause of her extraordinary condition, visiting a Catholic Bishop to ask whether her bleeding is stigmata, bathing in the Ganges and visiting an alternative medicine centre. But when a world expert on blood disorders flies in to examine her, Twinkle's journey of discovery edges closer to some uncomfortable possibilities.
