I’m Aware That I’m Rare: Kelly Lynch (360)

The phaware® interview

Kelly Lynch is a pulmonary hypertension patient from San Francisco.

In this episode, Kelly discusses her parasitic twin, battling depression and finding a platform to express her rareness on TikTok.

My name is Kelly Lynch. I live in San Francisco. My rareness doesn’t really start with PH. PH is probably lesser of the rare things for me, because I was supposed to be a conjoined twin and the other baby just didn’t develop so I ended up with, some might call it a parasitic twin situation, where it was just kind of parts and bits and pieces. Essentially, the main thing that I ended up with is an extra spine, so it’s like double-helixed. It kind of created this hump which is now hunching me over, which over time has contributed to the PH. So, I’ve actually probably had PH my whole life, but not to the degree where it was very severe or known.

When I was younger they actually did quite a few surgeries on me, they did a series of three in one year to keep me more upright, because they had an idea that it was going to…