Exactly two weeks after undergoing a life-changing operation, Angelica and Angelina Sabuco have been released from Stanford hospital.
They will spend the first night in their own beds Tuesday night.
Doctors at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital in Palo Alto separated the formerly conjoined twins on Nov. 1 in a marathon surgery that more than ten hours and required a team of more than 20 doctors and nurses to execute.
The pair are healthy and doing well, according to doctors.
"We're very happy with their progress," said lead surgeon Gary Hartman. "Their liver function is normal, they’re no longer on pain medication, their appetites are growing; they’re almost ready to go home."
Even before getting home, the previously inseparable twins are getting used to their new found freedom already.
"Angelica and Angelina are doing great—sleeping in separate beds, eating their favorite foods, and even taking their first steps," said the girl=s' mother Ginady Sabuco. "For the first time, our girls will be going home in two separate car seats. We are so grateful to the entire team at Packard Children’s. The surgeons, the nurses, the therapists and everyone on the staff—they have all been amazing."
But the girls are not completely out of the woods yet. The girls will have to continue to undergo physical therapy and occupational therapy daily to build their strength, endurance, gross- and fine-motor skills.
Angelina and Angelica are still learning how to stand on her own without having the other sister as a counter-balance as well.
Both girls are also being taught to walk forward, rather than sideways. And there could be more surgeries down the line.
“I’ll see them weekly as outpatients for a while,” Hartman said, who noted that a plastic surgery would also be seeing the twins for plastic surgery follow-up for their separation wound.
But for the family, there are still preparing for a new life, with daughters who will require two of everything.
