Does This Look Right to You?

I have hesitated to write about this, because it was so weird and I wasn’t sure it was really happening. Well, maybe I just wanted to believe it wasn’t happening. When it comes to one’s own children, you want to believe they are perfect with no flaws or deformities.



It all started about 4 weeks ago. Initially it was really subtle: they just looked a little off. I mean, babies are supposed to have heads that are slightly large for their bodies, right? But look at this picture of Rylie from that early time period. Looking back it is hard to believe I didn’t immediately realize that something was wrong. But I really had no idea and neither did anybody else. Clearly this sort of condition strikes at a common human blind spot.



By St. Patrick’s Day it was obvious that something was going on. Where earlier they had been showing all sorts of developmental progress, like turning over and holding their heads up, now it seemed that in many ways they had returned to newborns, unable to do anything with their strangely enlarged heads. I think it finally hit me that something was really wrong when none of their clothing would fit over their heads anymore. They could only wear clothes that buttoned up the front or were eight sizes two big for them.



After a particularly ugly night of denial followed by tearful recriminations, we finally came to the realization that we had to take them to see a doctor. Of course the physician knew exactly what was going on the moment she laid eyes on the roly-poly twosome: Cranial Panis Mica.

Apparently the girls were eposed to some extremely rare variety of yeast that interacts with the semolina of the brain causing swelling and significant asymmetric gigantism. While rare it is not rare as you would think. It can look quite grotesque on five month year old baby, but the body will eventually catch up, or at least most of the way. The doctor suggested the body may even try to overcompensate for the large discrepancy by accelerating the body past where it would have been. I.e., they may end up taller than they naturally would have been. So apparently I should break out the basketball shoes.



The key thing is this is rarely a life threatening illness, although it obviously could lead to significant self-image issues as they interact with other children their age. Until they go through puberty they will continue to have these oversized skulls. We may want to consider a special school to replace the elementary level, where the doorways have all been enlarged to accommodate their immense noggins.

The doctor asked us if we had been traveling, as the yeast that causes this condition is almost completely non-existent in the United States. Significant outbreaks have been seen in Tasmania, Uzbekistan, and large regions of India. I have been racking my brain, trying to figure out how they could have been exposed to a weird Indian yeast spore. No luck yet, but if anybody has any ideas, I’d like to hear them. This rare pathogen is also sometimes known as the Anubis strain.

I have no idea why.