Shiloh Pepin, Mermaid Girl

Meet Shiloh Pepin, the mermaid girl. Born in August 1999, in Kennebunkport, Maine, Shiloh has a very rare congenital disorder known as sirenomelia, or mermaid syndrome, where the legs are fused together resembling a mermaid's tail. But Shiloh is unique in another way, she is living well beyond what was ever expected.

Most people born with sirenomelia die within a day or two of birth because of complications associated with abnormal kidney and bladder development and function. It results from a failure of normal vascular supply from the lower aorta in utero. And little Shiloh was in fact born without a bladder, uterus, colon or vagina, and with only one partial kidney and one ovary.

But because of a kidney transplant at four months of age, and a second one in 2007, Shiloh fights on--a truly remarkable feat. Overall, she has survived more than 150 surgeries. It will be interesting to see what limits she'll be able to push with a combination of modern-medicine and her will to survive. I send my thoughts and blessings to the sweet little mermaid of Maine--keep kicking, sister.