Abby and Brittany have already celebrated their 31st birthdays and say that dreams come true: they were able to get a driver’s license and a license to teach at school. And this is a double joy for them.
Abby loves to stay at home, is not afraid of heights and loves to drink coffee even at night – the drink does not interfere with her sleep at all. Brittany prefers to party, looks down from an airplane window warily, and doesn’t overdo her caffeine, which makes her heart beat too fast. They could have become two best friends, complementary halves, but they became big: sisters with one body for two.
When Abby and Britt were born on March 7, 1990, the doctors were in a daze. Ultrasound showed no abnormalities, and the Hensel family was expecting one daughter. The first minutes of the acquaintance of the mother and her children were decisive: Patty recalls how she fell in love with the girls at first sight and never regretted that she did not separate them.
Operations for Siamese twins often end tragically: in most cases, either one child or none survives. The Hensel sisters were not separated, but the doctors were sure that Britt or Abby would die within the first 24 hours, but the girls not only survived, but also celebrated 31 years of life – happy and satisfied with their fate.
The parents of the Hensel sisters decided to send them to a regular school so as not to hide them from the outside world and lock them up within four walls. Yes, children can be cruel, and classmates initially offended Brittany and Abby, but they turned out to be tough nuts. Any other child would have run out of class in tears by now, but the girls firmly believed that they were no different from their peers and even studied better than some.
And the sisters really found friends for themselves – not always, by the way, common ones. If the girls agree with each other’s opinion, then they answer “I” in the correspondence, and if they have different views, then they specify the name. “We are different people, with only one body,” they say.
They even have different body temperatures: someone gets hot faster, the other freezes, so fights for a blanket occur regularly. But this is, in general, the only serious conflict since childhood. In 31 years of living in the same body, the sisters have learned to get along with each other and compromise, although one day while playing in the yard, Britt hit Abby on the head, failing to share the toys.
The maximum they are arguing about now is the choice of clothing.
