These conjoined twins spent their lives in a hospital. They just went home - as two.

[DonViejo]

By Lindsey Bever November 21 at 2:01 PM


LEFT: Heather Delaney holds conjoined twins Abby and Erin. RIGHT: Riley Delaney holds the girls after their separation surgery. (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia)

Abby and Erin Delaney have finally gone home — more than five months after the formerly conjoined twins were separated in a rare surgery.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said Monday that the twins have been discharged, ending an emotional 485-day stay at the hospital where they were born in summer 2016.

For 15 months, the girls had remained in the hospital. Now, they are headed home, to Mooresville, N.C., with their parents — “just in time for the holidays,” their mother, Heather Delaney, said in a statement released by the hospital.

-snip-

Abby and Erin were born prematurely by C-section July 24, 2016.

Since then, the twins have lived at the hospital, where in June they underwent a complicated 11-hour surgery during which surgeons worked to untangle blood vessels and separate the brain’s outermost membrane and the sagittal sinus. The hospital said at the time that it had separated 23 other pairs of conjoined twins over the years — but never a pair of craniopagus twins, those who are connected at the head.

“This is one of the earliest separations of craniopagus conjoined twins ever recorded,” Jesse Taylor, a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at the hospital, said in a previous statement. “We know that children heal better and faster the younger they are, therefore our goal for Erin and Abby was separation as soon as possible with minimum number of surgeries.”

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2017/11/21/these-conjoined-twins-spent-their-lives-in-a-hospital-they-just-went-home-as-two

[hlthe2b]

1. Thankfully they were able to do it so young. Now they have a wide open future.

Good on them.