HEALTH

Formerly conjoined twins released from Le Bonheur

Tom Charlier
tom.charlier@commercialappeal.com

Miracle and Testimony Ayeni, formerly conjoined twins from Nigeria who were separated during an 18-hour operation in Memphis, have been released from Le Bonheur Children's Hospital.

"They're doing very well," said hospital spokeswoman Anne Glankler.

The nearly 14-month-old girls had been receiving follow-up treatment and monitoring at Le Bonheur ever since the Nov. 7-8 operation. Released Tuesday, they're staying with the rest of their family -- parents Mary and Samuel and older sister Marvelous -- at the FedExFamilyHouse, the nearby facility on Poplar that serves families of Le Bonheur patients.

The girls will continue to undergo physical and occupational therapy "for quite some time," Glankler said.

The Ayeni family arrived in Memphis last June, when preparations for the surgery began, with help from the Linking Hands Foundation, a group connected to the United Nations Children's Fund and dedicated to kids' health and education. The group had contacted Dr. Uzoma Ben Gbulie, a plastic surgeon at Le Bonheur who is a native of Nigeria. He checked about having the operation done at the hospital, where surgeons five years earlier had separated conjoined twin boys from Memphis.

The operation on the Ayeni girls, conducted by a 15-member multidisciplinary team, was especially complicated, surgeons said. Miracle and Testimony were born fused at the lower halves of their bodies, with their legs splayed apart as if they were doing the splits against one another. They shared parts of their intestines and a colon, and one had both kidneys fused together. Their bladders exchanged blood and drainage with one another.