Man Has Third Foot Removed - (WHITTIER) -- Doctors remove a third foot from a 33-year-old Whittier man. Jose Lopez has spent most of his life hiding the foot, which grew from the ankle on his left leg. Lopez now has just two feet, thanks to a surgeon who teamed with Whitter Hospital Medical Center to amputate the genetic defect free of charge. Lopez is now free to pursue his dream of becoming a horse trainer.

Yet another bit of forteana...That is exactly the kind of thing , that when I hear of it, makes me glad to be alive.

i want to know how a third foot would keep you from being a horse trainer.

Becuz trainers have to ride the horses. Having a 3rd ft. wd mean he cdn't fit into the stirrups/silly. But what did they do w/the foot after they removed it? I want to have it bronzed & use it as a paperweight.

he could have gotten special stirrups. he may have actually had an advantage with that third foot, one more foot to kick the horse with. just a thought.

bet we would have been an awesome tap dancer.

And just think of the sexual ramifications. "Suck my toes, baby."

Beyond the last msg... I was personally wondering what in gods name that had anything to do with sex?

jim - please refrain from using the phrase "sexual ramifications" in my presence. thanks.

I just want to know did the foot grow out at an angle or was it directly next to the other foot? What size was it? How did he hide it if it was normal sized? If I had an extra foot removed I think I'd want to keep it. It's not like having a mole taken off or something.

The first words my mother utters when she comes out of the anaesthetic are: "Your face is dirty, dear." My hand flies to my cheek. It's a bruise actually, the result of a scuffle at the rally, a brief, confused scuffle now that I stop and think about it, a case of my own steaming exuberance, then turning my head at the wrong instant and meeting an elbow intended for someone else. Not that my mother needs to know any of *this*. Anyway, she's drifting back to sleep now with her large, soft, dolorous hand tucked in mine. With my free hand I fish in my bag for the chocolates I intend to leave on her bedside table. She's in a room with four other patients, but I passionately resist the notion that she has anything to do with this moaning team of invalids. I've already spoken with Dr. LeBlanc and with the surgeon. They were smiling, the two of them, leaning against a hospital wall, freshly barbered as doctors always seem to be, their thumbs hooked in the pockets of their greenies. The news they imparted was good, wholly positive, in fact: the lump removed from my mother's side this morning was not, as they had feared, the pulpy sponge of cancer but a conpacted little bundle of bone and hair, which, they told me, was a fossilized fetus, my mother's twin sibling who somehow, in the months before her own birth, became absorbed into her body. A genuine medical curiosity, one of the devilish pranks the human body plays on itself from time to time. She's carried her lump all these years, unknowning, a brother or sister, shrunk down to walnut size and keeping itself quiet. Now it has been removed, and my mother's unsuspecting skin sewn neatly back in place. A pathologist will perform some tests and in a week the results will be confirmed, but there's no real doubt about what it actually *is*. It doesn't seem possible, I said at least three times. Dr. LeBlanc, however, assured me that though unusual, the phenomenon is not at all rare. I still can't believe it: my own mother spread out here on her hospital bed, as calm and white as a cloud, my own mother the unwitting host to a little carved monkey of human matter, her lifelong mate. This fleshy mystery drives all other thoughts from my head. Nelson Mandela is forgotten, the chanting demonstrators with their banners in the air, and an unknown elbow catching me under the eye -- it no longer aches, by the way. Also forgotten is my compleated paper on Mary Swann, now winging its way to Toronto, sadly late and less difinitive than I would have wished. Template of the Imagination! -- precious, precious. And Mary's lost notebook, still resolutly lost, no longer gnaws at me -- yes, the gnawing has definitely eased -- nor does Brownie's silence reach me, though I'm sure he must be back in Chicago by now. All these recent events, these *things*, seem suddenly trivial and rawly hatched in the light of what has happened: my mother's strange deliverance. Soon she'll be waking up again. In her sleep her lips move, mouthing a porpous message. I watch her eyelids, the way they flutter on top of what must be a swirl of rolling dreams, drug-provoked dreams, and in the middle of all that swirl must be imbedded, already, the knowledge of separation and loss. Or is it? There's no telling how my mother will react. I regard her large, trunky, sleeping body and think how little I know it, how impossible it is to gauge her response when told about her "lump". She may shudder with disgust, squeeze her eyes shut and shake her head from side to side, *not me, not me*, She has always been a fastidious woman, not much at peace with the body's various fluids and forces. I can imagine her clearing her throat, ashamed and apoligetic. Or she may surprise me by laughing. I remind myself that she has sometimes demonstrated signs of unpredictable humour -- witness her chesty retelling of family stories or the cartoons she occasionally clips from the newspaper and pins up in the kitchen. She may bestow on her little nugget a pet name, Bertie or Sweet Pea, and make a fully rounded story out of it, her very own medical adventure, suitable for the ears of her canasta cronies, more interesting, more *dramatic* than a gall bladder or a thyroid condition and a lot more cheerful now that it's out and sitting in a jar or formaldehyde. Would she ask for such a jar? Keep it up on the shelf next to her Hummel figurines? There sits my little Bertie. Or Sweet Pea. Laughing. Or she may grieve. Lord, *I* would grieve. I *am* grieving. Just thinking of this colourless little bean of human matter sharing my mother's blood and warmth all those years brings a patch of tears into my throat. My mother was the only child of elderly parents. She had a gawky girlhood, married, bore two children, was widowed, grew heavy, grew old; and all the time she was harbouring this human husk under the folds of her skin. It wasn't my father. it wasn't my sister or me, but this compacted little *thing* who followed her through her most secret rituals, bonded to her plunging moods and brief respites, a loyal *other*, given a free ride and now routed out. Under the hospital sheets her body already looks lighter, making my body -- hovering over her, adjusting her pillow, checking the i.v. needle in her arm -- correspondingly heavy. I'm tempted to grope under the band of my skirt, grab hold of my flesh and see what it is that's weighing me down -- whether it's Mary Swann who has taken up residence there or the cool spectre of lonliness that stretches ahead for me. Because it does, *it does*. My mother, still sleeping, breaths unsteadily, grabing little, light girlish puffs of air. For the first time in my life I envy her, wanting a portion of her new lightness. Probably she'll sleep like this for another hour. Relief begins to settle around me. The bruise on my cheek resumes its faint throbbing. When she wakes up we'll talk for a bit, and after that I'll slip off to the telephone to call Stephen as I promised.

Nate-- Humble apologies. I forgot. How about "sexual ewe-ifications?"