Woman born with odd birthmark undergoes tests for recurring health issues—learns she's her own twin
Some medical conditions remain hidden for years, revealing themselves only through unexpected circumstances. This was the case for Taylor Muhl, a singer-songwriter whose unusual birthmark and chronic health issues led her to uncover a shocking truth about herself. The birthmark was a straight line on her torso, with two distinctly different skin pigments on each side. “I probably did not get any health challenges until my preteens and my teenage years,” Muhl shared in an interview with TODAY. “I would go to doctors a lot. I would get the flu all the time or sinus infections or chronic sinus infections or migraine headaches. They couldn’t find anything.”
Despite multiple visits to doctors, and specialists, and undergoing C.A.T. scans and MRIs, nothing provided a solid explanation for why her immune system seemed to be attacking itself. "The left side of the pigmentation of my stomach is different than my right side," she said. As a child, Muhl was aware that she looked different, but it wasn’t until she began dancing that she started questioning it. “Right before my preteen years, I was a dancer, and that is probably when I first really noticed. Wait a minute, why doesn’t my stomach look like the other girls’ stomachs?” she recalled.
When she asked her mother about it, she was told, “It’s just a birthmark, and you’re special. That’s why you have it.” Every doctor she saw echoed the same response. Then one day, an ordinary evening watching TV changed everything. “I was watching a TV show. They had shown a picture on the TV. And it looked identical to my stomach. It was the first time ever in my entire life that I saw anybody who had a stomach like mine.” A week later, she visited a specialist for a sore throat, and her mother encouraged her to bring up what she had seen. "And I go. 'Well, I do have a birthmark on my torso and I saw this show."
After the doctor looked at it, she discovered a shocking reason. After further medical examinations, doctors confirmed that Muhl had a rare genetic condition called chimerism, meaning she had two sets of DNA. She had absorbed her fraternal twin in the womb, unknowingly carrying her sibling’s genetic material inside her body her entire life. "I am my own twin," she told TODAY. Muhl’s chimerism also meant she had two bloodstreams and two immune systems, which helped explain her lifelong autoimmune struggles.
“My body is treating my sibling’s makeup as foreign matter and it wants to reject it. And it can’t. It strips my immune system. My immune system is much lower than the average person’s. I had some immune testing done a year ago, and my all-around immune count was almost as low as somebody who has cancer.” As shocking as the discovery was, it also brought a sense of closure for her. "I felt freedom [after the diagnosis] because for the first time in my life, I knew why my stomach looks the way it does," Muhl told People, per Live Science. "Prior to that, every doctor said my stomach must have just been a birthmark … Finally, this is making some sense," she added.