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After surviving brain cancer as a child, 22-year-old Shauna Rae’ growth
was stunted and she is now a young woman stuck in the body of an
8-year-old.
Shauna Rae was diagnosed with brain cancer when she was only 6 months
old and underwent chemotherapy treatment that saved her life but also
caused damage to her pituitary gland, which caused her to stop growing.
Although there is no conclusive evidence that chemotherapy caused the
severe deformation of Shauna’s pituitary gland, the cancer treatment has
been known to occasionally cause endocrine problems in patients. But the
young woman managed to get over her problem, and despite looking like a
child, she longs to be treated as an adult.
“If you were to look at me, you would think I’m just a normal little
girl doing normal little girl things with my fun, crazy family,” the
star of TLC’s new docuseries I Am Shauna Rae explained in a recently
released trailer. “But the truth is: I’m not a little girl. I’m a woman,
a 22-year-old woman stuck in the body of an 8-year-old. Even though
physically I can’t grow up, I desperately want to be treated like a
grown-up. I am working on my independence.”
Shauna’s show is set to premiere on January 11, 2021, on TLC, and
features her everyday struggles, focusing on her attempt to live like an
adult while looking like a child. Things like drinking at a bar, getting
a tattoo, or going on a blind date are much more of a challenge than the
average person can imagine.
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Seeing as this is a TLC series, it’s probably too optimistic to expect a
science-based look at her cancer-induced condition. It’s probably going
to be more sensationalist than anything else, but even so, I’d say
Shauna’s case is intriguing enough to at least give the first episode a
try.
Shauna’s story isn’t unique. A few years back, we wrote about Zhu
Shengkai, a 34-year-old man who suffered a head injury as a child and
remained stuck in the body of a preteen, and then there was the case of
23-year-old Tomislav Jurčec who looked half his age because of problems
with his pituitary gland.
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