No, it’s not another Vampire movie. It’s about 14-year-old Twinkle Dwivedi who suffers blood loss from every pore about 50 times each day without being injured or touched. This undiagnosed disorder has prevented the teen from Lucknar, Uttar Pradesh from attending schools for the last two years as she was banned for the uncontrollable bleeding which occurs from her eyes to the soles of her feet.
In the U.S., a 16 year old American boy, Calvino Inman from Rockwood, Tennessee also was reported as suffering from this rare disorder with constant bleeding occurring from his eyes, which is currently being investigated by U.S doctors.
Dr George Buchanan was interested in Twinkle’s case and travelled to India to meet her. As a prominent American paediatric blood specialist even he was stumped. ‘I’ve never seen a case of someone who bleeds spontaneously from their scalp or their palms, or read about it in medical history.’
When he observed Twinkle in the Mumbai’s Jaslok Hospital, he was astonished to see that when she bled he saw “no signs of cuts or bruising anywhere on her body [as] it doesn’t seem physically possible for blood to seep through intact skin.”
Twinkle attests “I bleed from my eyes, my hands, my head, from everywhere. From my ears, nose and eyes as well. It doesn’t hurt when the bleeding starts. But it makes me tired and sometimes I have headaches.”
Through tests that consisted of cutting Twinkle’s skin to see how fast the blood stopped, they have shown that her platelets do not stick together properly meaning that she has a slight clotting disorder, which does not give an indication as to where the bleeding comes from.
Initially Dr Buchanan didn’t rule out abuse or self-infliction as a cause for the bleeding but he observed they had a healthy relationship with Twinkle, a Hindu defending herself saying that she wasn’t “causing this.” She continues, “Why would I want to make myself bleed? I don’t want to be like this. I want to go to school and have a normal life.”
Twinkle’s mother Nandani Diwedi says, “We have tried praying and seeking medical help to cure Twinkle. Sometimes you need to do both.”
Her condition is now being confirmed as one “they have never seen before.”
This unfortunately doesn’t inspire much hope. Also even if seeing someone constantly bleeding worries people, we would have rather not heard that schools are preventing her from her education. Banned is for miscreants and troublemakers. She is guilty of an unpreventable condition. They should make accommodations for the poor girl.
We do like her positivity though and we hope they do find a cure for her.
