My dream has come true

NEW YORK: “My dream has come true,” said a smiling Arlene Aguirre, the Filipino mother of two formerly conjoined twins, as she faced a roomful of reporters and TV cameras at a news conference yesterday at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore, New York. This is the first time for the twins’ mother to speak publicly since last week’s operation. Aguirre thanked the doctors and everybody else involved in the operation, saying she cannot wait to hold her children in her arms separately.

“I have missed being able to hold them separately ... and I want to be able to play with them one-by-one,” she said. “I want to see them sitting, walking... and for them to be able to see each other.” Resting and recovering in side-by-side beds, the twins remain stable, sedated and under close observation in the hospital’s paediatric intensive care unit. Both boys are actively moving their arms and legs, yet the twins have not yet seen each other. “We will probably organise that moment for them and for Arlene later this week,” confirmed paediatric neurosurgeon James Goodrich and paediatric plastic surgeon David Staffenberg, the boys’ two lead surgeons.

Asked if she had been afraid at any point about moving forward with the surgery, Aguirre said, “I knew that when I first found out I had conjoined twins, I knew this was a real risky operation and I knew that I might lose one of them, but it never stopped me from doing it. I had to get a chance that they would be separated. And that’s it, my dream has come true.” The boys, who were attached at the head, were separated in a 17-hour procedure that was their fourth operation since coming to the United States last year. Doctors were surprised to learn that their brains were actually fused together, but they continued with the separation anyway. The surgeons said they are being very cautious about the boys’ recovery and would keep the twins at the hospital for two or three more weeks before they are sent to another hospital for continuing therapy. The boys will require additional reconstructive and cosmetic surgery over the next one to two years which will also be done at the Children’s Hospital.