Abigail and Brittany Hensel

Abigail and Brittany Hensel (born 8 March 1990, Minnesota) are dicephalic conjoined twins. Brittany is the left twin and Abigail is the right twin. Each of the girls manages one side of their conjoined body. They have two spines which join at the pelvis. They have two stomachs, four lungs and, originally, three arms when they were born. The middle arm between the heads was useless and was amputated when they were babies; this arm was deformed conjoined parts of the left twin's right arm and the right twin's left arm.

They are very compassionate girls and they have quite different tastes from food to clothes. Even at their birth they were considered to share too many of their bodily functions to be separated (one of the girls would have certainly died and the other would have run a very big risk of dying) and as of today it looks like it will never be possible to separate them. At age 12 they had to undergo surgery to correct the scoliosis they had developed as a result of their conjoined body.

The twins' parents buy them clothes which are altered by a seamstress so that they have two separate necklines in order to stress that they are two individual persons. Abby and Britty can walk perfectly well and they like to play sports like volleyball, basketball, kickball, swimming, bicycle-riding and other sports. Their bloodstreams are connected, so if one sister takes a medicine both benefit from it, and they share the individual nutrients taken in from one or the other of the girls. They know they could never be separated. Britty says: "I'm not going to be separated," and Abby says: "And I don't have two heads.".

If their spinal cords were joined at the pelvis, it would provide a route for direct nerve linkup between the twins to coordinate activities such as running.

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Categories: Conjoined twins | 1990 births