Conjoined twins Erika and Eva on post-surgery course to be ‘happy, healthy girls’

Mixing hard medical facts with light-hearted humor, surgeons for conjoined twins Erika and Eva Sandoval recounted details Thursday of the risky and intricate surgery that cleaved the girls in two.

Two days after the girls were wheeled into surgery at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford, veteran pediatric surgeon Dr. Gary Hartman called the 17-hour separation a success and said the 2year-olds are “recovering quite well.” He made his first public comments at a packed news conference with four other members of the 50-person medical team.

From the moment Hartman’s team first met the twins’ parents, Aida and Arturo Sandoval, he said the shared goal “has been the same goal we have for all of our children: that we end up with two happy, healthy girls.”

“Anyone who saw the girls before surgery can testify to the happy part,” Hartman said. “We think that this week we made a big step toward the healthy part. The girls are recovering quite well.”

When it was the Sandovals’ turn to speak, the Antelope couple struggled with their emotions.

At first, Aida spoke steadily about seeing Eva and Erika separated after a two-year journey filled with hope, setbacks and prayers. When she switched to Spanish to accommodate the bilingual media, her usually sing-song voice became choppy with emotion.

“It’s been a long journey to get here,” she said, fighting back tears. “The moment we knew we had conjoined twins, we wanted to get them to this place where they can still have an individual life and still be together. That dream came true Tuesday.”

Both parents expressed gratitude to the Stanford medical team, which started working with the couple in 2014, not long after Aida learned — at age 44 — that she was pregnant with conjoined baby girls. The couple also have three adult children, who attended the conference.

On display were 3-D models of the twins’ anatomy, which surgeons used to plan the separation. One was a model of the blood vessels in their pelvic area, while another showed the pelvic bone, spines and legs.

Hartman noted that despite its seriousness, the separation surgery also had its lighter moments.

“My silly part was where we were going to separate the girls: Do we go around the belly button or through the belly button?” Hartman said. “I wanted each of the girls to have half a belly button, so for the rest of their lives, they could each look at it and remember, ‘That’s how I was connected to my sister.’”