Former conjoined twins celebrate third birthday

WASHINGTON — Formerly conjoined twins Carl and Clarence Aguirre celebrated their third birthdays yesterday at the Blythedale Children’s Hospital in New York, fighting over frosting and balloons and delighting in a very messy, chocolate cream-filled Sesame Street cake, doctors who attended the party said.

It was their first birthday celebration as separate individuals after the boys, who were born joined at the tops of their heads, were separated last August in a surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center (CHAM), also in New York.

Dr. David Staffenberg, chief of pediatric plastic surgery at CHAM and one of the surgeons in the team that separated the brothers, said he was overwhelmed to see them "doing so well on their very first birthday as individuals."

The boys actually had two parties — one for their 2 1/2 to 6-year-old classmates and another given by their mother Arlene for her friends.

Differences in the twins’ temperament were apparent during the children’s party.

Dr. Robert Marion, the pediatrician who has been caring for the boys since their arrival at CHAM from the Philippines on Sept. 10, 2002, said Carl fell asleep at one point.

But Clarence, he said, "was hamming it up, entertaining young and old partygoers alike."

"What we’re seeing today is a birthday party, but it is really the celebration of a medical miracle," Marion said. "Before Carl and Clarence came to the US, they had absolutely no chance of survival. Now, we’re all looking forward to a future for them filled with health and happiness."

The other doctors at CHAM agreed Carl and Clarence were doing "just beautifully" in terms of their rehabilitative therapy, slowly catching up with their peers in terms of motor skills and speech.

"We’re keeping a close watch on them through regular CT scans and observation to make sure there continues to be no neurological problems," said Dr. James Goodrich, director of Pediatric Neurosurgery.

Goodrich said the boys were still making up for the first two years of life, which they spent lying on their backs with very little stimulation or developmental support.

But the doctors, he said, were amazed at what the twins "can do and what they are quickly learning to do just like their peers."

"I knew the day Carl tried to run me over with his tricycle that I was going to have to watch out for these kids," Goodrich said. "They are both full of surprises… just like three-year-olds everywhere."

PAL Foundation sponsored the trip of the Aguirres to New York.