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The popular term Siamese twins originated with a celebrated pair named Eng and Chang, born in Siam (Thailand today) and exhibited across the U.S. from 1829 to 1840. Eng and Chang, who lived to the ripe old age of 63--still a record for conjoined twins--were connected at the chest by a flexible band of cartilage. (Modern surgeons could have separated them easily.) Connections at the chest and abdomen are the most frequent configuration for conjoined twins, though medical texts list more than a dozen possible permutations. Dicephalic twins like the Hensels, who have two heads but share one two-legged body, are among the rarest. Only three or four cases are on record.
Patty and Mike Hensel had no idea what they were in for when Patty's first pregnancy came to term six years ago. A spunky, attractive emergency-room nurse, Patty, now 37, had no signs that there was anything unusual about her pregnancy. Ultrasound tests indicated a single, normal fetus. (Doctors later guessed that the girls' heads must have been aligned during the sonogram.) Mike, who works as a landscaper and carpenter, thought he had heard two heartbeats at one point, but that impression was soon dismissed.
Because the fetus appeared to be in a buttocks-first, or breech position, Patty was scheduled for a Caesarean section. She was woozy with anesthesia, and Mike was not in the room, when doctors attempted the delivery. They pulled out the buttocks, then the legs and finally, to their astonishment, two heads. "We all stood in silence for about 30 seconds," recalls Dr. Joy Westerdahl, the family's physician, who assisted at the birth. "It was extremely silent."
Mike recalls the painful way he was given the news. "They had a pretty crude way of telling me. They said, 'They've got one body and two heads.'" Patty, still under sedation, heard the word Siamese and couldn't quite grasp it. "I had cats?" she asked.
The girls were whisked off to a children's hospital in a nearby city. "We thought they were going to die," recalls Patty, who remained bedridden in the community hospital where she works, suffering from dangerously high blood pressure. Her sister, Sandy Fiecke, acted as her surrogate for several days at the children's hospital. She held the tiny girls for hours, offered them bottles and wore Patty's or Mike's sweatshirts so the girls would come to know their parents' scents. The task of informing friends and family fell to Mike. "It's pretty hard to explain to your folks how the kids were put together."
But once it was clear that the twins were healthy and the family could fall into a normal routine of bathing, feeding and cuddling, "we knew it would be fine," recalls Patty. And so it has been. Aside from an operation at four months to remove a third arm that projected awkwardly between their heads, the girls have not needed surgery. They have been hospitalized briefly three times: twice for pneumonia in Britty's lung and once for a kidney infection.
Westerdahl says it is impossible to guess about their long-term prognosis but for now they are "healthy and stable." Brittany is more prone to colds and coughs than Abigail. Since their circulation is linked, notes Patty, "we know that if Abby takes the medicine, Britty's ear infection will go away." The twins need only one set of vaccinations, says Westerdahl: "They like that they don't have to get two shots!"