[adinfo] 1990年3月7日，Abigail Loraine Hensel和Brittany Lee Hensel出生在美国明尼苏达州Carver县，这对双胞胎姐妹一降生就震惊了所有人，因为她们的脑袋共同长在了一个躯体上。
For Patty and Mike, the initial shock was followed by acceptance and then absolute devotion.
AT FIRST IT SEEMS two girls are galloping across the snow-dusted school yard. Then it appears there is only one. Two pink ski caps bob along, and two pretty, mirror-image faces - one ginning giddily, the other dreamily frowning. But below the neck the numbers don't add up: a single torso in a purple parka; one pair of arms; one pair of rubber-booted legs. Abigail and Brittany hop into a waiting car. Inside, Mom gets two kisses and one hug. she drives her daughters home.
Abigail和Brittany性格开朗，她们在myspace网站上建立了自己的主页，并告送其他人她们和正常人一样地生活。
Abigail和Brittany像其他少女一样经常和朋友们在一起嬉戏打闹。
这对同体双胞胎也经常出席各种聚会
A double bed with a Lion King comforter dominates the sisters'
bedroom. Their way of being, however, is as much about singularity
as it is about doubleness. "This is me," says Brittany, pointing to
a snapshot on the wall. Abigail runs a finger along an antique
chest: "My dad gave this to me when I was little," she says. she
winds up a musical figurine, and the girls pirouette to the tune,
each with a graceful arm held high. In the kitchen, Britty sips
milk. Abby, who despises milk, chugs orange juice. Still, through
their mingled bloodstreams, Britty is supplying Abby with calcium
and protein; Abby is sending Britty a dose of vitamin C.
The girls are asked to tell the world something about
themselves. "I'm not going to be separated", Britty declares. "And
I don't have two heads," says Abby.
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? Bound to each other but defiantly independent, these
little girls are a living textbook on camaraderie and compromise,
on dignity and flexibility, on the subtler varieties of freedom.
And together with their courageous parents - two adults who are as
extraordinary as these two children - they have volumes to teach us
about love.In their basement rumpus room, the Hensels are having a rumpus. Patty, a brisk 37-year-old who could play the ex-cheerleader in a sitcom, tries to stop DaKota, three, from smashing his tiny car to bits against the wall. Little sister Morgan, 21 months, rides hard on an old-fashioned rocking horse. Abby and Britty have seized a plastic racket from a chest brimming with toys.
"Let's play golf!" Abby cries.
"You can't play golf with that," says Mike, 40, a burly man with an open, friendly face. "That's for tennis."
"Doesn't matter," says Abby. Her father shrugs and rolls a ball toward the twins, who putt it back. Three antlered heads - two deer and an elk, bagged by the hunting Hensels - gaze down indifferently on the fun.
An unmistakable air of well-being suffuses this household. The house itself is a fine one: a solid two-story colonial, perched on 20 acres of midwestern flatland Four hounds and a horse have the run of the property. With Patty's income as an emergency-room nurse and Mike's as a carpenter and landscape worker, the couple are among the more prosperous in their village of 300 people. (To keep the girls from being deluged with attention, LIFE is concealing the town's identity.)
Abby and Britty are lucky to live in such a setting, and they're lucky to have a set of parents intrepid enough to help them navigate a difficult path. If the Hensel adults ever feel overwhelmed, they don't show it. "I don't think we've ever said, "Why us?" says Mike. Instead they seem to relise the challenges posed by their two eldest daughters. They have taught Abby and Britty to swim, to ride a bike and to explain that they came from a single egg - and are therefore special - when other kids ask questions. They buy the twins snazzy outfits, then have a seamstress modify the upper portions. "It's important to create two separate necklines," says Patty. "Otherwise it would make them look like they're one person." They encourage the girls to express their individual tastes in everything from leggings (Abby likes blue, Britty prefers pink) to hobbies (Britty is into animals; Abby loves to draw). While the Hensels are not particularly religious.
I watched a program last night about these twins, these two young ladies now, who for some reason, never quite separated into complete identical twins as infants. Some of the things they can do are miraculous to say the least. Each girl controls the limbs on her side but the two of them can run, and play sports, and type with two hands, and that just about blows my mind. During the program they showed the girls getting their driver's licence's, and driving.
Abigail Loraine Hensel and Brittany Lee Hensel (born 7 March 1990, Minnesota, United States) are dicephalic conjoined twins. Brittany ("Britty") is the left twin, and Abigail ("Abby") is the right twin. They have two spines which join at the pelvis. They have two stomachs, four lungs (they were originally thought to have three) and, originally, three arms when they were born. The middle arm between their heads was underdeveloped and useless, and was amputated when they were babies.
Abigail and Brittany Hensel's parents are Patty (a registered nurse) and Mike Hensel (a carpenter landscaper). When the twins were born, the parents chose not to have them separated. As they share many bodily functions, the operation would have been risky and would have left the twins in wheelchairs. They do not regret their decision. The twins themselves have stated that they do not wish to be separated.
