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player ready...They left Guatemala for the United States seven months ago, tiny patients conjoined at the head, born into poverty and facing an uncertain fate.
They returned Monday as independent little heroines, tiaras perched atop their bandaged heads, their dark circumstances transformed by the perseverance of young parents and the help of well-wishers in both countries.
Surrounded by doctors and nurses who were fighting tears, Maria de Jesus and Maria Teresa, 17 months, were brought outdoors and into the sunshine for the first time since they arrived at UCLA’s medical center June 7. They wore matching dresses with frilly white socks and soberly studied the cameras that flashed in their faces.
Being outside thrilled the girls, said nurse Margo Goldman as she prepared to fly to Guatemala with them. As the van drove them to the airport, Maria Teresa, the more subdued twin since the surgery, peered out the window at the trees and buildings whizzing by. Suddenly, the baby of few words exploded into excited babble, making her parents gasp and then laugh with joy.
Early Monday evening, the sisters landed in Guatemala City. Things at home have changed.
A Guatemalan building company has donated a home to the Quiej family. It will have new appliances and will be among the nicest in their impoverished village of Belen, at the foot of a volcano, nurses say. The twins’ 21-year-old father, Wenceslao Quiej, who earned $2 a day bagging bananas, has a new job waiting for him with the Pediatric Foundation of Guatemala, which also has arranged for a place for the family to live in Guatemala City while the girls recuperate.
Many in the strife-torn country, where the girls are considered miracles, say the new house and job are the least that can be done for a family that, through patience and determination “has opened a path to hope, a sense that things can change,” said Rev. Hugo Reyes Velasquez, a village priest. “The parents struggled … and they knocked on doors and opened hearts.”
The doors that swung widest were at UCLA, where doctors performed the $2 million separation and nurses and social workers took care of the girls.
When the “little Marias,” as they are known in Guatemala, arrived at UCLA, their bright brown eyes peered in opposite directions and their mother, Alba Leticia Quiej-Alvarez, 22, could not care for them alone. It took two sets of hands to help the girls do anything. Though healthy, they could not crawl or sit up. When one was bathed, the other had to be held upside down.
The girls were brought to the United States by the international charity Healing the Children. UCLA covered the cost of the medical care, although donations defrayed about $500,000, most of which came from a single anonymous donor.
On Aug. 5, after a 23-hour operation, the girls were separated. Maria Teresa was rushed back to surgery because of bleeding in her brain. She returned to the operating room twice more that month.
At first, doctors did not know whether the girls would suffer brain damage or whether they ever would recover fully. Such a separation had been attempted only a handful of times, and not all the twins had survived.
But the girls recovered. In the first days after the separation, nurses noticed them reaching to the tops of their heads, feeling for each other’s warmth. Now, nurses say, the girls are fascinated by the sight of each others’ faces.
The Marias still face a hard road of physical therapy and more surgery to remove skin grafts from their scalps. A team of seven doctors and nurses from UCLA accompanied the family back to ease their transition. The girls will be in a private hospital in Guatemala City for at least three weeks.