SKIRMISHER

A doctor in Colorado, Dr. Paul Grabb, had been operating on the brain of 3-day-old Sam Esquibel when he realized that “little weird tumor” was actually a foot — and intestines!

“The foot literally popped out of the brain,” Grabb told TheDenverChannel Wednesday.

The appendage threatened the newborn’s life.

When Grabb performed the life-saving surgery at Memorial Hospital for Children in Colorado Springs, he was in for another surprise: he also found what appeared to be parts of an intestine in the folds of the infant’s tiny brain, in addition to another developing foot, hand and thigh.

“I’ve never seen anything like it before,” Grabb told the Colorado Springs Gazette. “It looked like the breach delivery of a baby coming out of the brain.”

Sam was delivered on Oct. 1, within hours of an ultrasound that showed what appeared to be a tumor developing in the brain of the fetus. Three days later, Grabb performed the surgery to remove it.

The reason for the strange growth was not clear at first. It was thought to be a teratoma — a congenital brain tumor composed of foreign tissue such as muscle, hair or teeth — or a fetus in fetu, which is a developmental abnormality in which a fetal twin begins to form within the other.

Grabb, the only pediatric brain surgeon in southern Colorado, said that the formal pathology report identified the mass as a teratoma because of how perfectly formed the structure was but there is a fine line between that and the fetus in fetu.

“So it’s unclear if a fetal twin began to form within another,” Grabb said.

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