The white dressing covering Jadon’s head is gently unwrapped, revealing a perfectly shaped head and a hairline with a natural curl.
It’s the first time his parents have seen him without his bandages in four weeks. That’s when he and his twin brother, Anias, born conjoined at the head, were separated in a 27-hour surgery at the Children’s Hospital at Montifiore Medical Center in the Bronx.
Mother Nicole McDonald stands at his bedside in awe. Although new bandages will be put on, the sight is breathtaking. “It’s the most amazing thing. I just can’t even believe it,” she says. “And look at his little hair. On top, it’s growing in!”
His father, Christian McDonald, leans in. “Hey there, my man,” he says, “You sure are handsome. Look at you. You look like a perfect little boy.”
Jadon stares up at them, waving his right hand. He then taps the top of his head.
“How does it feel to be your own little boy?” Dad asks. Mom mimics her son, touching her own head and, imagining what he’s thinking, asks, “Where’s my brother?”
Anias rests in his bed across the room, near a window. His head remains wrapped. “You’ve been having a tougher go of it, but you’re going to get through it,” Dad tells him.
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The boys, now 14 months old, are set to move to rehab shortly after Thanksgiving, about six weeks after the surgery to separate them. The world’s previous record for recovery from such an operation, known as craniopagus surgery, was eight weeks. Many separated twins remain hospitalized for months.
Lead surgeon Dr. James Goodrich is checking on the twins in their 10th floor room on a rainy, unseasonably warm November afternoon. He’s considered the leading expert in the world on twins conjoined at the head, and this was his seventh craniopagus operation. But it was also his most complicated: the boys’ brains so intertwined, Goodrich considered stopping hours into the operation.
“Historically, this will be the fastest (recovery),” Goodrich says at Jadon’s bedside.
“I didn’t know that,” Nicole responds. “So they were maybe your hardest set, but the fastest ones out of the hospital.”
Goodrich nods. He attributes their remarkable recovery to one thing: “Just good kids.”
The surgeon marvels at how well Jadon and Anias are doing. “I’m the least complaining person in this room,” he says. “When they’re ahead of schedule, it makes everyone happy.”
Jadon is a bundle of energy — “a crazy wild man,” in his mother’s words. He chews on wires. He reaches for faces. He locks onto a gaze and smiles. He tugs at the dressing when it’s covering his head. It seems he can hardly be confined to his bed.
With twins joined at the head, Goodrich explains, there’s always a dominant child where one child does double the work, that child’s heart and lungs working overtime to keep both boys alive. In this case, Anias is the non-dominant child who has struggled with breathing and eating, even prior to the surgery. But Anias is progressing well, the doctors say, getting stronger since the surgery.
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The non-dominant child in these cases, he adds, “just takes longer” to recover.
Tepper says the thing that surprises him the most is that Anias, despite his setbacks, has gotten stronger since the surgery. “In a way, kind of staying conjoined and attached was inhibiting him and not letting his body recover and do the things he was capable of doing.
“But when they got separated,” Tepper says, “it was time for him to fly on his own — and he’s doing just that.”
Goodrich says he’s most inspired by Jadon’s spontaneity, how he tugs at stuff and reaches for people. “Nobody is forcing him. Nobody is telling him to do it. He’s very spontaneous, and that to me is the most encouraging.”
At Jadon’s bedside with Nicole, Goodrich recalls the most difficult moment of the surgery, when he considered stopping because the boys’ blood vessels were so intricately tied together.
“I was afraid by clamping those veins, if any one of them ruptured, that’s how you lose a child,” he says.
But he says a moment of opportunity arose — “a little hole to work through.” The doctor proceeded, making the correct move to separate the boys.
“(If we) made the wrong one, we wouldn’t be having this conversation,” he tells Nicole.
Again, Jadon smiles.


http://digestng.com/2016/11/28/separated-twins-hardest-surgery-quickest-recovery-see-first-time/

Wow this is cute

this is the greatest news I have read in many months...I wish this kids grow up to be great and useful to the world..