PORNO? « “No tits but a great personality”

PORNO?

15Set08

Abigail and Brittany Hensel are conjoined twin – products of a single egg that for some unknown reason failed to divide fully into identical twins. (Doctors and family members generally avoid the term Siamese twins, with its sideshow overtones.) Just one child in 50,000 is born connected by some body part to a womb mate, only about 500 such babies are known to have survived their first year, and fewer than a dozen – precise numbers are unavailable – are living in the United States today. Rarer still is Abby and Britty’s particular condition, known as dicephalus: No more than four sets of surviving twins in recorded history have shared an undivided torso and two legs. Each of the Hensel twins has her own heart and stomach but together they rely on three lungs. Their spines join at the pelvis, and below the waist they have the organs of a single person. Each controls the limbs and trunk, and feels sensations, on her own side exclusively: If you tickle the ribs on the right, only Abby giggles. Yet the girls manage – no one knows exactly how – to move as one being.

The paradoxes of the twins’ lives are metaphysical as well as medical. They raise far-reaching questions about human nature: What is individuality? How sharp are the boundaries of the self? How essential is privacy to happiness? Is there such a thing as mental telepathy?

Most of Abigail’s and Brittany’s shared organs are located at or below the level of the navel and their merging coccyx.

* 2 heads
* 2 completely separate spinal cords
* 2 spines with ribs bridging the two columns
* 2 arms (originally 3, but rudimentary central arm was surgically removed, leaving central shoulder blade in place)
* 1 broad ribcage, with surgery to correct scoliosis and expand the pleural cavities
* 2 breasts
* 2 highly fused sternums, traces of bridging ribs
* 4 lungs (medial lungs moderately fused, not involving Brittany’s upper right lobe); three pleural cavities
* 1 diaphragm with well-coordinated involuntary breathing, slight central defect
* 2 hearts in a shared circulatory system (nutrition, respiration, medicine taken by either affects both)
* 2 stomachs
* 2 gallbladders
* 1 liver, enlarged and elongated right lobe
* Y-shaped small intestine which experiences a slightly spastic double peristalsis at the juncture
* 1 large intestine with one colon
* 2 left kidneys, 1 right kidney
* 1 bladder
* 1 set of reproductive organs
* 2 separate half-sacrums, which converge distally
* 1 slightly broad pelvis
* 2 legs