(2 of 2)
Brenda and Beverley grew into pretty babies, more than doubled their weight in 5½ months. Often one twin was wakeful while the other slept, or laughed while her sister cried. With four hands to reach for a bottle, feeding was sometimes a comedy of errors. With four legs to kick, diapering was doubly difficult. Sometimes Brenda put her fingers in Beverley's mouth, or the other way around.
X rays showed them to be "mirror twins," one having the heart inclining to the right, the other to the left. Other organs were similarly transposed. Their breastbones were fused. The twins shared some rib cartilage and other tissues. So far as the surgeons could tell in advance, their biggest problem was going to be separating the large liver which the twins shared.
But the X rays had not told all. The one liver had to be divided where it was thickest, three inches in diameter. Worse yet, the anxious doctors found that the twins' chest cavities were connected and contained a single sac which held both their hearts. The hearts were abnormally long and crossed over, so that each beat partly in the other twin's body. When the hearts were separated, there was no room for them in the tiny, undeveloped chest cavities.
Neither the doctors' skill nor the prayers of interested Albertans could save the babies. For a while, each strained heart was kept going by massage, but in little more than three hours after the operation began, both stopped.