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Maybe I'm just having a low-caffeine day, but I spent the whole article waiting for it to explain what it means for George to refuse to be separated from conjoi
by OJFord 3y ago
Maybe I'm just having a low-caffeine day, but I spent the whole article waiting for it to explain what it means for George to refuse to be separated from conjoined Lori who has now died, and what's going to be done about it. To save anyone else the time before facepalm, they both died last month aged 62.
(In defence against seeming a complete idiot, with the way they were conjoined it's not totally obvious, to a layman anyway, that there would be too much shared for one to survive the other. Plus surgeons obviously thought separation possible.)
- ninininino 3y agoIt's perhaps a bit morbid/crass to ask, but as they've both since passed (rest in peace), I wonder how in fact the death of the conjoined twin resulted/impacted the other twin biologically and how long one was able to live with the other passed?
- spondylosaurus 3y agoFrom other cases I'm aware of it sounds like the living twin tends to follow suit not long after. Chang and Eng Bunker died on the same day, and that was several centuries ago, but I can't imagine modern medicine has done much to change things. Plus, I'm not normally one for woo, but witnessing the death of your conjoined twin seems like a situation where you might truly die of fright (or a broken heart). Just awful to think about.
- skissane 3y agoTheir circulation is connected, the dead twin is going to give the live twin septicaemia. If a person has a gangrenous limb, we can amputate it. But what to do if the whole of your conjoined twin is gangrenous? Usually the cases of twins still conjoined in adulthood are cases where separation was not medically feasible, so “amputation” is not an option. Given this, they can live for a few hours, but once one twin is dead, death for the other becomes imminent and inevitable.