Two Heads, One Body: The Remarkable Story of Conjoined Twins Katie & Eilish | Our Life

[Music] it was like a robot i just seemed to just go down that corridor in a state of shock and when i got down i had to prepare before i went in to see them i had to sterilize and wash my hands and put on protective clothing and i just went straight in i didn't just prepare myself to look i just went over and just before i knew what was happening i was looking straight at my two daughters and my first words were to the doctor aren't they beautiful and he he sort of looked at me in surprise and he said yes i suppose they are [Music] myself autographs first in case the shock would be too much after seeing the photographs i wanted to see them in reality you know photographs can only tell you so much so when i saw them they're just two little babies i was amazed at how normal looking they were you know and they're frightened i suppose at the same time frightened that i would hurt them by holding them this way or that way like all mothers she just you know she was just delighted with them she just they were her children just like her other children and she had just the same bonding at that moment that any mother would have to her new born baby i was afraid i'd bund too much that was a worry because we thought they'd die and you were afraid to let yourself go too far to getting to know them prior to them being born that thought did come to us that we probably will not be able to accept them like we would accept other babies but when we saw them and held them that just evaporated away it just wasn't a it wasn't a consideration where our heart was probably ruling our head at that stage you know we just didn't we didn't logically think anymore we were just our emotions were just taken over by the the joy of seeing that little children alive and you know wanting to be held like all newborn babies [Music] is may 1991 and the twins katie on the right and ilish on the left are two and a half years old they're playing with their three older sisters mary and liam only found out they were expecting siamese twins the day before they were born by cesarean section their doctors decided not to separate them i think the natural response when you see twins like this is to see if they can be like the rest of us whether that's good or bad and therefore lead separate existences but equally one would have to consider whether separating them just for the sake of conforming to our ideas of normality would in fact help them or kill them because this is a surgical procedure especially in the first few months of life that carries a reasonably high mortality as the infants get older the mortality rate drops and can get down as low as 10 percent the haltons live in a small village outside dublin where the twins are well known we won't ever have a completely normal life because we will always be open to people gazing at us when we go out in public but um i think acceptance is probably what we want more than anything else and or even the security in our own in ourselves that we're able to come and go as we please [Music] i'm amazed at how normal it is i i know we strive to keep it normal but i mean i'm amazed that we're actually more or less able to manage that we do what most families do trips to the zoo or trips to the supermarket and everybody goes [Music] now look guys are you tired the tire catching are you tired i'm very tired sami's twins are extremely rare they occur once in a hundred thousand births when purely by chance an egg in the womb fails to divide successfully their parents regard them as normal children in a unique situation now let me take this off i don't see how i would have coped in this situation at all and yet mrs holton meets you as though but everybody else has twins like this so what's the problem you thirsty eat a drink okay do you want apple juice yes mommy you want seven up ribena i think it takes tremendous strength and uh i suppose love to achieve this kind of equanimity in dealing with a problem like they appear to have been brought up in that household these twins are going to have great difficulty believing that there is really anything very much wrong with them they're so much part of the family so much part of everyday life they are accepted in their community so they are not made to feel very different liam is a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company neither he nor mary feels bitter the situation was much greater than us like crying over it or being angry over it or being bitter of it wasn't going to change the way the twins were so then you have to look into another part of yourself and say well right if i have to accept you know this cross christians would probably call it a cross you know the twins being the way they are is probably across like how do you carry that cross lightly or with meaning yo you're coming a very wrong way over here you don't have to come around physically the twins are healthy although doctors can't say for certain whether they'll live to a normal age they attend weekly physiotherapy sessions to improve their mobility right quickly it will take a while before they can walk i i imagine they're very top-heavy their two legs are holding the weight of two bodies which is a difficulty in itself and also it's said that a baby develops from the head down and i would imagine because they're able to sit up and just move on the floor that their legs are not developed yet anyway and the reason for physiotherapy is that we encourage them lift up that head aids up become good girls and one well done and down you go slowly now slowly as ever you like and right down i think you're having a rest halfway i would hope myself that they will walk initially i can see they'll start off with some appliances or that they just won't walk as a normal child would walk don't let me pull it backwards they'll need something to support their upper body weight backwards come on good girls well done well done is mom helping with the toes down there no english is looking and kate is hidden now who's there two girls two girls now go on pull them up again cattle likes a bit of fun she likes me in the middle of things island is a little bit more reserved and makes size people up and it wouldn't be as free-making with people as captain oh that's a nice dress i think those balloons could go home could they take it on quite well okay most of them occasionally there's a a bit of a row all right if one has a particular toy the other one says they can have a little scratching session or i'll bite you baby the big splash on my face yeah [Music] is you're blowing like this oh the children are totally accepted adults not so whereas they're quite chatty at home normally i was within the close family circle they are but if strangers come in they're inclined to shut up and say nothing and irish will observe and observe and observe and say nothing for some after a while they find that they will talk so so are they quite shy dude they would be shy but they're terribly nosy they like to know what's going on they irish particularly she has to really know what's going on i suppose it's her way of making sure that everything is okay and feeling safe oh [Applause] are we anyone in here to see us huh hello hello hello where's katie and eilish oh look how are you i'll give me a big kiss give me ah [Music] [Music] oh [Music] from the beginning the question of separation has overshadowed the twins lives but it was certainly obvious in a very early stage that these twins were going to be severely physically handicapped that it was going to be difficult if not virtually impossible to separate them and that this was going to present the parents with this terrible dilemma for many years to come so my initial reaction was one of disappointment horror if you like at the degree that the babies were going to be handicapped since the twins were basically healthy the pediatricians in dublin were able to delay surgery they were heavily influenced by the fate of another set of siamese twins born at the same hospital by an extraordinary coincidence just six weeks earlier an attempt was made to separate them they weren't as extensively joined as the holton twins it was thought reasonable to attempt to separate these twins but regretfully both twins died during the operation to separate them or shortly afterwards would take off these old dirty socks will we put them away and they're wet uh for my shoe oh yeah terrible isn't it no will we sit up as they grew older katie and eilish underwent tests to find out as much about their anatomy as possible although they have separate hearts and lungs they share other internal organs they're more severely joined than any siamese twins who've been successfully separated in the past i'm very tired staying together they really don't exhibit much sign of illness they are healthy children they are leading a good life separated they are going to be uh devoid of a number of the organs and appendages which the rest of us have to allow us to lead a normal life so we would in no way be promising them a normal life if they were separated like i mean there are an awful lot of questions to be asked it's not something that you say yeah well we'll do that anyway you have to know would the life their life be better if we were to go ahead or would they live we have to know the risks which i'm sure are high there's a lot of um doubt about the liver the possibility of separating the liver one or other might have to have a liver transplant and that would entail major risks but apart from that um the pelvis is shared by both so they would only have a half a pelvis each if they were separated so really would we improve the quality of their life to any major degree by separating them just for the sake of separating them oh i see what's going on the fact that katie and ilish appear to be happy together has made their doctors wonder whether they should be separated even if it is possible the rest of us looking at people like this think that they are different and being different is wrong and therefore that creates one pressure and the other part of it is it is possible i think for two people to have a very close relationship and perhaps not to see it as a disadvantage to be together to this degree all the time that's theoretical so though we value individuality they might not value it they might prefer togetherness if their relationship is such they could very well be happy with their togetherness now since only katie and ilish can answer this question should they be the ones to decide whether or not they're separated if they are left together long enough yes i could see that happening but i think we would really be talking about i suppose almost the end of the first decade before you would be they would be able to appreciate all that is involved and be able to give some kind of judgment they will have had a life together they will at that stage have seen how different other people are they will be aware of other people's attitudes much more than they are now they may feel that the end result is worth this i think at this stage the end result is a doubtful quantity for them and um i suppose just being a procrastinator i would certainly not want to make that decision for them [Music] when we see if there's a fish in the river yeah we look in and save us a fish nice [Music] summer 1991 and the holton's doctors in dublin have now made it clear that they are unable to give a definite verdict on whether katie and ilish can be separated so they've written to three hospitals around the world which have pioneered operations in this field toronto philadelphia and great ormond street in london the answers are eagerly awaited is that the dog what's the duck saying quack would you like me to get your big duck august 1991 and the three hospitals consulted have all replied it now looks as if the twins can be separated if further tests prove positive but it will be the most difficult operation of its kind ever undertaken our twins are so dear to us that we don't want to take any risks with their lives going ahead with a separation is a very risky business particularly at the moment the twins are healthy the twins are developing uh in about mentally and physically they're becoming more mobile so separation might offset all those benefits and until a very very good case is put towards us that separation could be a benefit to catherine and eilish we will not consider it as a possibility mary and liam have come to great ormond street hospital in london to meet professor louis spitz head of pediatric surgery and hassan and hussein siamese twins from sudan who were separated five years ago when they were just a few months old [Music] now you can wash it yes [Music] yes they cooperate pretty well on what they want to do one thing to do now and it's very interesting if you give them a a bottle say an empty lemonade bottle catherine will hold the bottle and eilish will screw off the lid so they cooperate to get yeah because they use one hand the other yes yes but they can do that yes it was the first time we ever met anyone face to face that had been through what we've been through and they've been through more because they've been through the trauma of of surgery and seen their children you know been being separated and happily seeing them you know come out of it successfully would you like to come to me yeah i'd like to hold you great oh my god good man heavy you're comfortable must be all the sweets he's eight i was quite upset earlier because i suppose it just hit me the impact of meeting these people and maybe what we may have to go through if there were to be like hassan and jose and they'd have they'd have to get an artificial leg we found that um the twins father was very much of the opinion that we should go ahead and he could see no other option i i think this maybe upset me somewhat though i could see from pfizer that she was more she had gone through the situation and she couldn't feel for us and probably a mixture of all emotions that i was quite quite upset you know thank you fantastic it was amazing to see these two little people as two human beings individuals and um how one of them seemed to be terribly outgoing i think it is hassan and hussein was quite reserved and sizes up a little bit but um and see them walking i mean i didn't know until tuesday that they could walk and to actually see it it was powerful it was brilliant to see them flying around getting on with their lives and eat their sweets and getting sick with them and everything it was brilliant um it definitely had a huge impact on me [Music] um um it actually hit me when i came home from the air stepped off the airplane and saw them i said you know here they are and what we've seen over you know it would be nice if we come home maybe two that were separate and maybe i've lived in a food's paradise i don't know but i think i would have changed my mind slightly all right i don't know if even feels quite the same but i think i do anyway oh look at what they're doing what are they doing once upon a time there was three bears if the risks are lauded more against one child than the other i personally wouldn't even consider it so there's a lot of ifs and buts before i could raise my hopes too much but i certainly feel that the quality of life of the two children i met is a lot better than i would have imagined but their porridge was too hot so what did they do they went out for a walk in the woods you see but these were very modern bears they actually went for a cycle in the woods and they're off on their bicycle look i wanted to be a little better i don't know where the little bear went to i think he's people out of the basket and while they were gone who came to their house goldilocks is [Music] candles [Music] oh [Music] birthday song well wait till the blood [Music] [Applause] [Music] is [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] uh [Music] december 1991 and mary and liam have come to see professor spitz again to help them decide whether or not to go ahead nice to see you again he's been to dublin to examine the twins and now feels positive about surgery good trip over thanks very much yes excellent excellent yes i think at this stage in their lives it would be impossible to say we'll sacrifice one in favor of the other we either go for survival of both or neither and i think we should say that the chances of them both surviving are really quite good i think i think the livers are a potential problem i think what we have got a very strong plus is that the hearts are separate the lungs are separate and the vertebral columns are separate right down to the base now once you have got that set up the next difficult area is the liver it is a big decision and that there are major risks in putting our children forward for this surgery and we don't have anything to say to you know reassure us or help us in making the decision i think you should view it as if all three of us and the two girls are in it together we have the same interests at heart we want the same out of the procedure we want success and we will strive to our best ability in order to achieve success we're all sharing the same feelings yes nice i know we were to try and make up our minds by the middle of october and we couldn't and it went on to the middle of november and we still couldn't and we thought well that by going to london again and meeting professor spitz and asking him the few questions that we had we felt that that actually would help us but um i think just before that i probably made my mind up that we should go ahead that is mary oh oh i had all those you know insecurities and and doubts about going ahead with separation but um as mary said uh london the last visit to london uh professor spitz really changed all that we asked him a few questions about risks and he the answers he gave us were really very reassuring that the risks weren't as great as we had imagined them to be let us proclaim the mystery our faith christ has died christ has risen christ will come again who would like to do some paintings january 1992 and the twins katie on the right and eilish on the left are settling in at great ormond street hospital but their parents have been reminded that at any stage before the operation they can change their minds and decide not to go ahead what other colors are they um green one it's been great everything's fine every staff have been fantastic everybody's been good twins have been excellent that's probably one of the major concerns they've been excellent that don't miss home and you know they've been in good form what do you want to do sarah's hand [Music] i'm painting this is an enormous undertaking and none of us are have any doubts that this is a vast procedure to perform the main areas of difficulty i think are first of all the deciding the degree of separation of all the internal organs we know for example that they share various pelvic organs and therefore one will have to make decisions about whether these organs can be split or whether you have to give something to one twin and something to the other twin so that's the first point we haven't come across a major bar to separation in our analysis so far of the degree to which they share their internal organs the second point about the separation will be the difficulty of obtaining skin cover in the conjoined area between the twins this may not look very large but the area is in fact quite vast between the shoulder and the base of the pelvis and if you imagine that if you just separate those two individuals and leave a raw area that is an enormous area from which over which skin has to grow or be placed hello hi hi hello girls how are you today all right a few weeks later and the twins have now had a small operation to insert four tissue expanders which will be pumped up at regular intervals using syringes full of your hand the water skin will eventually be used to cover the wound after separation so what we've got here is we've got our first tissue expander in here and this is where we've been injecting this isn't it and then we've got two in their tummies one on this side and one on this side and again we've been injecting those there and there at times you it occurs to you that you're putting them through an awful lot of trauma or whatever um i've never changed my mind um i've never once questioned why i'm here i've made my decision and i'm standing by it and i know that it's the best for katie and ellis and everybody in the hospital is very supportive and very helpful and extremely confident which maybe that's an area that i don't always tune in on with everybody else but that's probably just from a parent's point of view you're feeling tired march 1992 and the tissue expansion is almost complete but the twins have been through a rough patch they lost weight and now have to be tube-fed [Music] the white job that i wash your hair if we go back and look at twins who've gone through this before in this hospital i know in the latter stages they've been quite sick and have had quite a rough time and i think in a sense we've been lucky we haven't got to a very critical stage yet oh my god again yeah you like doing that don't you they're quite happy in themselves and they're happy being here which is very good i mean i think if they were unhappy in themselves it would be a lot harder on us you just feel you have to keep going you know i just feel that when i'm in the spot i just have to cope and i don't know where the strength is coming from but we seem to be surviving day by day we don't look too far ahead we just seem to just take each day as it comes and it seems to be the best attitude to cope with it which is katie do you see them guys okay stylish and that's handy i like they get some tube feeding oh yeah they've chosen the same as katie and amish do and have a very pretty dress okay you can early separate the dolls i don't want that you don't want to oh you do oh you let me do it will we give them some magic gas oh yeah will we i do actually saw this happening yesterday didn't you marry me katie and irish been put to sleep like this yesterday they're only three and a half they can't comprehend as i can but they have an idea of what's what's about to happen we've been using some cabbage patch dolls which we've adapted to look like katie and elish and we've called them katie and ellis and we go through a little routine usually every day and we take them apart and we can play with each one individually and we reassure them that we're going to be here through all of this terrible trauma this one is hellish and this is katie yes would you like to hold one of the twins now i like to hold katie yeah would you like to okay do you like the whole island and you can give them a special cuddle i'll give them a special cuddle now you don't have to give them a cuddle when they're stuck together anymore yeah and casey and alice will look something like that when they're separated do you want to hold her bread we'll give him red irish you can call it katie and in case you can go off over and have a cuddle [Music] you're sweating in here oh baby in here classically speaking they would be called uh thoraco omphalo ischiopagas bypass conjoined twins which means they're joined at the chest the abdomen the pelvis and they have two lower limbs a few days later and the operation is going ahead the team of surgeons anesthetists and nurses has its first detailed planning meeting this question about fusion or overlap of the left lobes of the liver and i suspect that will be a combination of both i think we have all the information we could possibly have about what is shared what blood vessels cross from one individual to the other we will know which vessels to control but in spite of this there must be a small risk involved with the procedure and we accept that the parents accept it as well which crosses to the renal bed it's difficult yes i think i think the the actual operative procedure is the major risk element to separation after separation there may be problems with skin cover and superficial infection but once physical separation has taken place the chances of survival are good how are you all feeling today oh it's a really funny day it's hard to know how we're feeling really it's just um it's just coming to the big event and i think you might be prepared for it you just don't know how you feel until you're right in the middle of it and i'm a bit numb at the moment really it's the impact of it hit me about two days ago and then it went for me it's coming back again now sometimes they just look at the twins it just hits me real bad and then it sort of goes away from me then when someone comes in to talk to us or that you know it's occupied i think the fact that people are calling in is a good thing you know it keeps us occupied it's good therapy for us too because if we hadn't done anyone calling in or just sitting here with the twins on our own all the time i think it'd be much harder really i'm not so sure how i feel i mean at this stage i wish it was the day i find waiting around is a little bit stressful and there are quite a few things the girls have to have done yet but um i think i'm in bits really um forget [Music] i have to are you going to give them mom gonna give him sweetie got him he wants a sweetie even the one this is the other teddy bear but he likes it okay are you reminding them okay she was very withdrawn when she came out of sedation but then again the drugs i think the effect of the drugs withdrawal from the drugs would would account for some of that but obviously uh the loss of katie must have accounted for you know how depressed she was i mean when she would wake you know from asleep she would look down at the side kate he was and she would sort of give a kind of a jerking reaction and then she might sometimes start to cry and be distressed so even though she didn't talk to us as i was saying she didn't talk very much we felt that she must have been gone through a very traumatic grieving process katie's death due to heart failure four days after the operation was totally unexpected her post-mortem revealed a weak heart it was such a pity really to lose katie but on the other hand we have the comfort of knowing that had we not separated katie and irish that we could have lost both katie and elise due to katie's heart being so weak it's amazing some of katie still lives in irish you know i mean eilish's personality was you know probably a more serious personality prior to you know the vision and now she has acquired a lot of the giggling and playfulness that would have been katie so it's just like as though she has probably taken on board some of katie's roles and which is lovely to see so when we look at eilish today we see some of katie there in spirit oh that's a hammer that's like when you have a headache press the airplane right the airplane again press the acorns that's not acorns that's the three what else is there who else is there who's that guy no we've no regrets at all we'll always miss katie in a sense you know she's been such a part of our life um at the same time you have to put your emotions on hold because you're so concerned with eyelash and we have to get irish well and get her home that in a sense and i'm living in this you know it's not a home environment here i mean it's quite good and all that but i mean i feel that i probably have things on delay until i get home and i've been home once since katie's funeral and i found it very upsetting i found it extremely hard to settle in here afterwards and i really can't wait to like at home with eilish you know i feel that then i can i can go on from then at the moment i'm on hold any secrets today no secrets we all do this can you share your secrets you

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Length: 50min 28sec (3028 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 23 2020