Alex and Angel Mendoza, the conjoined twins born in Phoenix in mid-August, were surgically separated Thursday night.
A team of more than 20 doctors and nurses at Phoenix Children’s Hospital worked for more than 12 hours to take the boys, who had been conjoined from their chests to their pelvises, and give them two separate bodies.
The boys were stable throughout the operation, but challenges remained.
Surgery continued late Thursday night, as separate teams worked on the long process of reconstruction to close each boy’s body.
Even if each surgery is successfully completed by Friday, as doctors expect, the boys will face more surgeries and intensive rehabilitation. Still, for the first time, their doctors can look at each one – and treat each one – as a separate person.
On the day Alex and Angel were born at Good Samaritan Hospital in Phoenix, doctors immediately began planning the operation that would separate them.
That day, their great-grandmother, Joan Bandel of Kingman, said, “The good Lord gave us this for a reason. We will love them together or apart.”