Sisters Eva and Erika Rose Sandoval couldn’t have been closer when they were born.
That’s because they were born as conjoined twins.
The Sandoval girls were brought into this world connected at their chest. Their hearts always remained closed even after a risky 17-hour surgery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Standford separated them.
The girls had a team of 50 doctors working on their surgical separation in 2016 when they were just 16-months-old.
“To know that they were going to have separate individual lives, it was such an amazing prayer that was answered,” said the girls’ at home nurse told Sacramento CBS 13.
Learning to live their lives apart was a big change for the girls and those who cared for them.
“It was a lot of unknowns and we didn’t know how to do things for them and it was a lot of different things. How do we put a diaper on them? How do you hold them? How do we change them?” Erica Keesis-Segura, who was with the twins in the NICU in Stanford, said.
The surgery left them each with just one leg, but that hasn’t stopped the girls from thriving.
“They are missing one leg, but they are normal. As normal as they can be. To us, they are perfect,” mom Aida said.
“They said they would never be able to sit down, they were still in the hospital when they sat,” added dad Arturo.
By 2020, they lived their lives just like other 5-year-olds, except they used walkers and prosthetic legs for mobility.
They loved their Barbie car and discussed things they learned that day in kindergarten like the “abdomen” and “thorax” of a bee’s anatomy.
“I’m in awe at the conversations they have with me sometimes,” Aida said told the Stanford Children’s Health blog.
Aida said she is incredibly proud of how far her girls have come.
“When I see the pictures, I can’t believe we were there,” Aida said. “It still amazes me to see them at this point in their lives.”
These girls can even do things that other kids their age can’t.
For example, can you kick a soccer ball on one leg? Well, Erika can.
“Erika loves to get her prosthetic on and walk around the house,” Aida said a few months before the video above was taken. “I can picture how she’ll be doing it on her own as she gets older.”
One of the most amazing things about these two girls is their beautiful smiles that can light up a room.
These girls are still smiling the same big bright smiles they’ve been smiling since they were still connected.
Mom Aida just raves about her very happy-go-lucky girls who are both incredibly intelligent.
When you look at these girls, it’s almost like you can see a flash of God or all the beautiful and good things in the world.
You can see what we mean in the video below.
Please SHARE this with your friends and family.
