Conjoined twins head home but face challenges ahead
Idaho parents learn girls are too healthy to risk separation
By Mike Hixenbaugh
Callie Torres takes a bottle next to her conjoined sister, Carter, on Friday in Houston. The girls were delivered by cesarean section last month at Texas Children’s Hospital.
Chelsea Torres holds on to her twins as she prepares to strap them in Friday for the long journey home to Idaho.
Carter and Callie Torres are strapped in to a custom-built car seat Friday as the family prepares to leave the Ronald McDonald House in Houston. The family uprooted their lives in Idaho six months ago to give the conjoined twins a chance for a healthy birth.
Dad held the babies upright on his chest, patting them and swaying, while Mom crammed the last bag between a cooler of donated breast milk and a new portable crib.
“Well,” Chelsea Torres said, closing the trunk and turning to her husband, Nick, “it all fits.”
That was the easy part.
What lay ahead was far more daunting.
Leaving the hospital with a newborn is a moment no parent is ready for. What if the baby screams in the car? What if she won’t take a bottle once you get home? Chelsea, 24, and Nick, 23, have an even darker worry: What if the girls don’t survive the drive?
The doctors assured them everything should be fine, but it’s hard to shake that fear. They’ve carried it for months, ever since the doctor back in Idaho told them Chelsea was pregnant with conjoined twins. Ever since they decided to ignore his recommendation to have an abortion. Ever since they loaded their 3-year-old son, Jaysin, into their Kia Optima six months ago and drove 25 hours to Houston.
“I’ve been dreading the return,” said Nick, dark circles under his eyes after days with little sleep. “I’m just glad we’re making it with two healthy babies.”
That was never a given. The couple set their sights on Texas Children’s Hospital after several experts told them the surgical team here offered the best shot at saving the girls. They arrived in town with no plan and little money. They scraped together enough to rent a tiny mobile home near the Texas Medical Center.
Thankfully, Chelsea was young enough to stay on her mother’s health insurance.
They thought they might be here for years. But after Carter and Callie were delivered via cesarean section last month — conjoined at the belly, and sharing every organ and limb from the waist down — the doctors shocked them: The girls were so healthy, they weren’t candidates for risky separation surgery.
It’s a future they’ve only begun to contemplate: How will the girls learn to walk? Will they be able to go to public school? Will strangers ever stop staring at them?
“For now, I’m just worried about getting home,” Nick said. “One thing at a time.”
They’ll return to Blackfoot, Idaho — the town of 11,000 where they met and started dating in middle school — but little will be the same. They’ll move in with Nick’s mom, just until he can find a job. He’d been making $9 an hour managing a dollar store — “good money,” he said — and is hoping he can match it.
They plan to take their time getting back, stretch the 1,700-mile drive over five or six days. Take lots of pictures. Pray nothing goes wrong.
Chelsea put a fresh diaper on the girls and fed them one more time on Friday afternoon. Now it was time to go.
She placed the babies into their custom-built car seat, while Nick set Jaysin up with toys and books.
Callie started crying first. Then Carter. Chelsea closed the car door, muffling their screams.
She took a deep breath.
“They’ll settle down eventually,” she said.
And then a moment later, “We can do this.”
Nick punched an address into his GPS, while Chelsea backed out of the parking spot.
She stopped briefly, looking back at the babies. Then she put the car in drive and headed toward the highway. mike.hixenbaugh@chron.com twitter.com/Mike_Hixenbaugh