Samuel Armas was diagnosed with spina bifida at 14 weeks’ gestation, a condition that, if left untreated, can lead to paralysis, brain damage, and other problems.
At 21 weeks’ gestation, a team of doctors, led by Joseph Bruner and Neal Tulipan at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, lifted Samuel partially out of his mother’s uterus, closed the lesion in his spine, then placed him back in the womb where he stayed for another 3-1/2 months.
Michael Clancy, a Nashville-area free-lance photographer snapped the photo when the surgery was nearly over, and caught the unique moment when Samuel extended his hand through the partially-closed incision and squeezed the surgeon’s finger.
It must be getting harder to call it a blob.
www.michaelclancy.com
