A pair of conjoined twins who were separated when they were babies shared an update on how they’re getting on in the years since their surgery.
Isabelle and Abby Carlsen, from North Dakota, spent their first six months in a Minnesota hospital, joined from the chest to the stomach.
It was during a routine ultrasound that Isabelle and Abby’s mum, Amy, first learnt that the girls were conjoined.
At they time, they had a one in 100,000 of surviving to full term, but the girls defied all odds and on 29 November 2006, the twins were born.
While Isabelle’s heart was fixed to Abby’s chest, their organs were also twisted together.
Over the following weeks and months, a huge team of highly skilled experts worked together to come up with a plan on how they could separate the girls as safely as possible.
Incredibly, after training for months, a team of 17 surgeons were able to successfully operate on the girls when they were six months old.
Back in 2016 – 10 years on from the surgery – and the girls said they can’t remember ever being conjoined, but explain there are some little signs that they were once attached.
“Every night we look in the mirror in our room, and we’re like, how do people get us mixed up?” Abby told CBS News.
“In the mall, we like grab each other’s hands. It’s weird.”
Meanwhile, dad Jesse said: “They don’t want to be confused for one another. They’re their own person.”
And Amy added: “Words can’t express how thankful I am for what they did for our girls.”
It’s now been nearly two decades since the surgery, with the girls celebrating their 18th birthdays back in November.
While conjoined twins are rare, it is not always possible for them to be separated.
A pair of conjoined twins who lived to the age of 62 once explained why they wanted to stay conjoined.
Defying all expectations, Lori Schappell and twin George were born in 1961, with their skulls and left side of their foreheads fused together in Reading, Pennsylvania, US.
Medical science wasn’t advanced enough at the time of their birth to separate the craniopagus twins, but even when it became possible, as their brains weren’t fused, the twins were set of staying together for one particular reason.
Lori told the Los Angeles Times: “I don’t believe in separation. I think you’re messing with God’s work.”
Her twin added: “Would we be separated? Absolutely not. My theory is: why fix what is not broken?”
