Featured Image Credit: The Today Show
Topics: Life
Emily Puckering
The first ever set of conjoined twins to survive separation surgery have opened up about how their lives have been since the life-saving operation.
Back in 1955, twins Lillian and Linda Matthews were born suddenly at home in the Mississippi town of Indianola.
But when 29-year-old physician Dr. Clinton Battle arrived at the Matthews' family home, he was in for the shock of his life.
The birth had complications, and when Dr. Battle - who was fresh out of medical school - successfully delivered the twins, he immediately saw they were conjoined and that one wasn't breathing but still had a heartbeat, according to an article in the Global Journal of Medical and Clinical Case Reports.
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Lillian and Linda, who are now 55-years-old, explained to Sam Brock for The Today Show: "[Our mother] was in labor and they couldn't figure out what was going on because my twin here… I was coming out and then going back in."
The twins, who were conjoined from the sternum to the navel and shared a liver, were swiftly rushed to Indianola's South Sunflower County Hospital, weighing 11 lbs. and 6½ oz.
And just 5 weeks later, doctors were able to successfully separate the girls - despite the odds of their survival being extremely slim.
"The odds of us surviving were probably zero," the twins said.
Medical journals and doctors at the time pronounced Lillian and Linda as the first separated twins to 'survive and thrive' after their surgery at the Memphis hospital.
And from day one, like many twins, the girls have been inseparable and despite growing into a family of nine siblings, Lillian and Linda remained closer than ever throughout their childhoods and adolescence, all the way through to adulthood where they both became teachers.
And perhaps the most remarkable thing about the Matthews twins is how they both went on to have seven children and 16 grandchildren between them, despite doctors telling them that they would never be able to have children of their own.
The twins told The Today Show that they hoped their story could bring hope to parents who were going through tough times, saying that their story symbolises 'hope'.
"They can be our twins. They can have a healthy set of twins and they can survive."
While conjoined twins are an incredibly rare phenomenon, they are estimated to occur in the range of 1 in 50,000 births to 1 in 200,000 births, with a somewhat higher incidence in Southwest Asia and Africa, according to the Global Journal of Medical and Clinical Case Reports.
The most recent success story of a conjoined twin separation comes from last month - after history was made at the Cook Children's Medical Center in Fort Worth when 4-month-old JamieLynn and AmieLynn were successfully separated.