Conjoined twins, Abby and Brittany Hensel, wowed the world after becoming a ‘medical miracle’, learning to drive, work and marry with the other by their side
With only a 1% chance of survival beyond the first year, 34-year-old conjoined twins, Brittany and Abby Hensel, were deemed a ‘medical miracle’ after becoming one of the first sets of conjoined twins to survive infancy.
With just one set of twins in every 40,000 born connected in some way to each other, conjoined twins, which refers to twins that are physically fused in utero and consequently at birth, generally have a poor prognosis. The total survival rate is 7.5%, and only 60% of the surgically separated cases survive according to The National Library of Medicine.
While the twins share a single body and all the same organs (including intestine bladder and reproductive organs) they are joined at the pelvis and share a single body from the waist down, controlling one side of the body each. This means growing up, working in synchronicity was key, as leaning to crawl, walk and clap required careful co-operation and co-ordination.
After rising to fame when they appeared on Oprah Winfrey and the cover of Life magazine in 1996 at only six-years-old, the twins then starred in their own reality series on TLC in 2012, which showcased them graduating college together, travelling to Europe and seeking their first job. The twins have been subject to much speculation since.
The twins were born in Minnesota on March 7, 1990, to parents Patty, a nurse, and Mike, a carpenter. Patty had no idea she was carrying twins until the birth. While doctors told the couple they could perform surgery to attempt to separate the twins, it was likely one of them would die as a result. “How could you pick between the two?” father Mike told Time Magazine in 2001. From a young age the twins learnt to work together, running, swimming and playing together, even learning to play the piano, with Abigail taking the right-hand parts and Brittany the left.
The twins enrolled at Bethel University in Minnesota, where they initially took different subjects. However, lecturers warned it would be impossible for them to take twice as many classes and get their homework done, leading them to enrol on a teaching degree. They graduated in 2012 with two Bachelor of Arts degrees.
After settling on a career in education, the twins now work as fourth- and fifth-grade teachers (the equivalent of Year 5 and 6 in the UK), with a specific focus on maths, at Sunnyside Elementary School in Minnesota, While the twins take a dual approach (that allows one to teach, while the other monitors and assists), they only receive a single wage: “Obviously right away we understand that we are going to get one salary because we’re doing the job of one person,” Abby explained previously to the BBC.