despite being premature, the boys are in remarkably good shape. nicole and christian decide to name them jadon and anias. their names mean god heard and god answered. heard and answered the daily prayers for their survival. we felt like god was already with us and really had been with us. but then anias begins to struggle. breathing issues, vision problems, heart failures, even seizures. it takes four rocky months to stabilize the twins. february 2016, they are finally ready to go home. you re going home. you re going home. while every new parent has a steep learning curve oh, yeah, you shake that, jadon. the mcdonalds is steeper than most. just to move the boys takes two, one adult holding each baby in
ordeal. give me a little more. the clock officially starts at 9:45 a.m. plastic surgeon dr. oren tepper makes the first indecision. double skin hooks. cutting through the scalp to the conjoined skull and then removing the bone. get some bone wax ready. that he ll save and use later to rebuild each boy s head. at 10:15 a.m., dr. goodrich takes over and begins the process of exposing the delicate brain tissue. he starts with the parts of the brain he worked on before, opening them up to get access deeper into the shared tissue. in order to do this operation, they ve got to continuously move jadon and anias. so this is the position that they re in beforehand, and they essentially flip like this and then like this. so now they re going to focus on this part of the bone and this
more complex than goodrich expected. if he injures it or just kinks it, the blood won t drain, and both boys brains will begin to swell. that could be devastating. this is the veinous complex. but then at 1:30 a.m., goodrich and his team see a way through the land of the unknown. you should be one centimeter away from it. you can see it right there. and in the midst of the quiet chaos, all of a sudden [ applause ] 2:11 a.m., almost 17 hours after they began, jadon and anias mcdonald are separated. now each boy s head can be rebuilt and closed up. jadon is finished first. how did it go, do you think?
you get this guilt like, oh, which baby do i go to, and how do i do it? it s an odd change. jadon! and also remember her 3-year-old, aza, has not been allowed in intensive care, and nicole hasn t left since the surgery three weeks ago. finally she feels confident enough to leave. i was like, all right. we re going to go to dinner. and we had a great time at dinner. until a message from the hospital. it s like one of my worst moments, i swear. it s not anias this time, but jadon. he s having a massive seizure. they re trying desperately to get it under control. your earth sattehatters, and feel the worst guilt for leaving them because who was holding his
life-threatening infections and return trips to the operating room. just last week, he had a skin graft. healthy tissue was surgically removed from his back and used to replace diseased, infected skin on his head. it s all extremely painful. this is the first day nicole has been here to comfort anias. i ve actually been gone. my 3-year-old has hand foot mouth. hand footh and mouth disease, of course is very contagious and potentially dangerous for the babies. we were quarantined because neither christian nor i could come here. we didn t want to bring anything here. so they make the best of being away. much needed quality time with aza, road tripping to boston and connecticut. they try to escape the worry. were you able to mentally leave? no. no. i called a lot. probably very good for you, your mental health. it was. it was good. but the boys missed.