Photos as a means to heal

On a website about TTTS I found several stories from parents who had lost one of their twin-babies to that ugly disease. In order to create an image of his/her twinship for their surviving child they make pictures of the child and modify them so they show two children. Of course, it's the same child twice and nobody syas otherwise, but since TTTS mostly affects identicals it's still a way to create a visible might-have-been and parents find this healing for themselves and their survivors. I tried to do it on a picture of me at age age 3. These two pictures are set next to one another in a scrapbook my parents made for me when I was a child and they do look like twin-photos even without arranging them (which I am not very good at).

Books on Twin LOss No 10 "From a clear blue sky" by Timothy Knatchbull

I had read Timothy Knatchbull's story years ago in Joan Woodward's "The Lone Twin" and when I heard he had written a book himself I thought: I have to read that. Still, it took me almost three years to actaully buy it. Other books came between and I sort of forgot to look out for his and then it came my way again in a peculiar manner.
I had one of those crazy dreams I seem to have a subscription on. In this one I was washing my clothes in a muddy puddle and - not surprisingly - got them back just as dirty, but I kept putting them back into the murky water. The next day I just stumbled upon this book on I-don't-remember-which-site and ordered it right away. It was just the remedy I needed, the clear water missing in my dream.
Timothy Knatchbull, a great-grand-nephew of some degree to the Queen of England (I couldn't decipher the relation correctly not being familiar with Royals at all) was born an identical twin. In his book he describes his relationship with his brother Nicholas both matter-of-factly and touchingly. "In a way we were married to each other", he says, and that they had constant company and empathy, they truly were each other's best friend and inseparable. Before Nicholas died they had hardly spend more than two or three days apart.
Nicholas died at age 14 when the IRA put a bomb into the boat the Knatchbulls and their extended family, including the Grandfather, Lord Mountbatten, a prominent member of the royal family, used during their holiday in Ireland. Only Timothy and his parents survived. Twenty years later Knatchbull tries to trace his life back to the second he and his twin-brother were ript apart. he follows first his family's history and especially their link with the small town of Mullaghmore in Ireland, step by step, minute by minute, he approaches the fatal moment when the bomb exploded, then the rescue, the stay in hospital, the funeral he couldn't attend, the slow recovery (including a beautiful chapter about a stay at the Queen's own scottish castle for recuperation) and his way into adulthood till the point he realizes he is not as well as he makes everyone including himself think. To hear the sound of a bomb exploding in your every other day is not normal and healthy, he finally states and seeks out professional help. But more therapeutic then the appointments with a psychologist it's to Knatchbull to go back, step by step, to the day and place it happened and find a way to do what he couldn't do at age 14: say good-bye to this twin-brother.
I followed Knachtbull's story breathlessly and tried to make it my own. There has been a moment in my life when just something like that occurred, a bomb exploded under me and tore my twin and me apart. Only it wasn't a bomb. Only it had no sound in the womb. Only I will never be able to trace my life back to that moment the way Timothy Knachtsbull did. I tried to do it by proxy using his book, though, and it tought me a new respect for this moment, shrouded by the prenatal past, but nevertheless just as real and fatal as the IRA-bomb was for him and Nicholas. Maybe this is gain enough from an otherwise very thrilling and interesting book: to know something like that DID happen to me and I will find my way to deal with it. It cannot be the same way Knachtbull took, but a way can be found when I closely listen to the sound of MY bomb and try to find the traces leading to it. And on.

Am I a TTTS-Survivor?

Recently I gave the thought some room why my mother wasn't more shocked by having a miscarriage. Knowing my mother she could just have been occupied with something else and not notice much, but to give her credit I think she would have been more troubled had she lost a lot of blood. So, that she didn't indicates the placenta did not abrupt and this might indicate a single placenta, a monochorionic pregnancy. Some of my mother's symptoms match the placental disease of TTTS, Twin-to-twin-transfusion.syndrome. To make a long story short in those cases one twin gets too much blood and the other one not enough. It's very dangerous for both twins and even today where laser surgery is available sometimes both babies die. The twin who doesn't get enough blood - called the donor - often has little or no amniotic fluid, gets "stuck", is delayed in growth while the other twin - called the receptor or recipient - develops hydrops (fluid under the skin), has far too much amniotic fluid and often suffers from heart-failure due to having to pump too much blood. IF my mother had it - and there will never be any proof - it might explain the small size of the fetus, that it was able to slip out at all, and the symptoms she felt on herself like high blood-pressure, kidney failure and such which took her hospitalized sometime in March '63. Also, I had some symptoms that might be associated with TTTS at birth like a very large placenta and an umbilical cord unusually thick. Also, IF my mother had TTTS my twin most probably was a girl, although in v ery, very rare cases TTTS develops between fraternal twins, too, when their placentae fuse.