Featured Image Credit: Instagram/@anjachristoffersen
Topics: News, Health, Social Media, US News, Instagram
Kit Roberts
Topics: News, Health, Social Media, US News, Instagram
A woman has shared what it's like to live with a condition that means she has two vaginas and 'no bum'.
Anja Christoffersen, 26, was born with a chronic health condition called VACTERL association.
This is a rare and complex set of birth defects that begin very early on in the development of an embryo.
It affects the physical composition of the genitals and anus, and can lead to renal, anal, vertebral, cardiac, tracheoesophageal, and limb abnormalities.
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The condition occurs in between one in 10,000 and one in 40,000 births.
In Anja's case, it meant that she was born with two vaginas and no anal canal.
Her specific condition is rarer still, occurring in just one in every 50,000 births.
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Of course, being born without an anal canal will lead to a lot of health complications, and Anja recalled how she had frequent hospital trips when she was little.
She told The Courier Mail: "As a child, I didn’t even know there was anything wrong with me. I basically spent my first five years of life living in hospital because I had so many surgeries and admissions."
Anja now works as a model and lives in Australia, and shared how it is still difficult for her to talk about the condition despite having lived with it her entire life.
Taking to TikTok, she said: "No matter how many times I talk about this, I still feel vulnerable. Being born with one pelvic opening instead of three is a very strange thing to try and explain.
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"So my two vaginas, my urethra, and my anal opening all come out in one hole. As a woman, we’re supposed to have three. I had one."
Anja's first surgery happened was when she was just five-hours-old, which saw her be fit with a colostomy and vesicostomy so that waste could leave her body.
When she was seven-months-old, she had a full pelvic reconstruction which created the three openings she needed.
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Not only that, but her oesophagus was joined to her windpipe, making swallowing very difficult.
She said: "I actually can’t swallow. I don’t have any contractions in my food pipe, so eating and drinking can be quite challenging as it is gravity functional only."
It has also made the prospect of having children more complicated.
Anja said: "Along with having two vaginas, that also comes with two uteruses and what comes along with that is challenges with having a baby.
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"I should be able to have children but only able to carry them to about seven months. Hopefully, that happens one day, but who knows."
She added: "It doesn’t have to have an impact on your quality of life and the dreams that you can achieve."
Anja uses her platform to advocate for people who are similarly affected.
She has also started up a company called Shh!tHappens that produces eco-friendly sanitary wipes which are aimed at the disabled community.