Thankful yet?

• aquagenic urticaria: allergy to water. If water touches Nineteen-year-old Ashleigh Morris's skin, she breaks out in "sore, itchy red lumps" that last for two hours. She can only take one minute showers, often crying from the pain. Even sweat will make her skin break out. Doctors believe that a heavy dose of penicillin at age 14, caused this. Source

• Kleine-Levin Syndrome: a neurological disorder that causes the need to sleep. Arielle Farber, began sleeping 23 hours a day in 1994 at age 13. Approximately a year later, Arielle had "been sleeping a little less excessively than in her past bouts, but has yet to leave the second floor of her home, or see or speak to anyone beside her parents." However, as of March 2007, she has been "incident-free" for the past three years. There is no cure. Source. Source.

• trimethylaMinuria: the person smells strongly of dead fish due to a faulty enzyme and build up of TMA, triggered by the majority of foods. Camille, a teacher and former model, grew up smelling like dead fish, no matter how much she showered or how much perfume she used. It led to a very painful life. While there is no cure, Camille manages the smell with a very strict diet, chlorophyll tablets and frequent showering. She says, "I wash with several different products, and I scrub very hard. I use two different kinds of deodorant and a lot of perfume. Before I actually leave the house, I spray all of my clothes with Febreze just all up and down, and I also spray my feet and my socks with the deodorant for my feet." Source.

• chimerism: a person is their own twin. Lydia Fairchild's children were going to be taken away from her by the Department of Social Services when her DNA did not match theirs. Knowing her children to be hers, she fought a court battle, eventually discovering that she had chimerism. In essence, "in her blood, she [is] one person, but in other tissues, she ha[s] evidence of being a fusion of two individuals." This occurs when two fertilized eggs with unique DNA, fuse in the womb. She won the battle for her children. Source.

• Human echolocation: Blind people using echolocation to "see." Ben Underwood and Daniel Kish both went blind from cancer at the age of two. However, both men learned to make a clicking sound every half second for echolocation. Kish explains: "I have mental images that are very rich, very complex. They simply do not possess the visual element." Underwood can ride his bike, play basketball and "hear" walls. Kish founded World Access for the Blind, a foundation to teach echolocation to other blind people. Source. Source