After 13 months of being attached to each other from their heads, conjoined twins, Anias and Jason McDonald finally saw each other for the first time. The successful surgery, which took place at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, started on Thursday and ended the following day after 27 hours. The separation procedure itself lasted 16 hours, followed by more hours of surgery to rebuild their skulls and make them whole. Jason was the first of the boys to be finished and was wheeled out of the operating room with his perfectly shaped head wrapped in gauze. He was taken on an elevator to the pediatric intensive care unit on the 10th floor, where he was reunited with his parents, Nicole and Christian McDonald.
“My boy,” Christian said with tears in his eyes. Nicole bent over in tears. On her Facebook page, Nicole wrote: “TWO SEPARATE BABIES!!!…and yet I ache with the uncertainty of the future. I didn’t cry until the surgeons left the room. I was barely able to even utter the words ‘thank you’ because of the pit that still sits heavy in my stomach. We are standing on the brink of a vast unknown. The next few months will be critical in terms of recovery and we will not know for sure how Anias and Jadon are recovering for many weeks.”
More than five hours later, around 1 p.m., surgeons finished operating on Anias, and he was brought to the 10th floor unit — where the family was finally reunited. The surgery was led by Dr. James Goodrich, considered the leading expert on what’s known as craniopagus surgery.
source: cnn.com
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