(Reuters) — Formerly conjoined twins Owen and Emmett Ezell were released from a children’s hospital in Dallas on Wednesday (April 16).
The boys were born last year connected at the abdomen. On August 24, 2013, doctors at Medical City Children’s hospital in Dallas surgically separated the twins.
Ever since then, the boys have stayed at the hospital. Now, both boys are breathing on their own with the assistance of a special breathing tube and are receiving food through a tube connected to their abdomens.
Doctors decided their condition had improved enough to transfer them to a local inpatient rehabilitation center, where their parents, Dave and Jenni Ezell, will learn how to operate this equipment. According to a press release from the hospital, the children could be sent to live with their parents by this summer.
At a news conference just before the release, doctors, staff, and the boys’ parents all said it was an emotional day, as they had all become invested in the boys’ progress, and were unsure starting out whether the operation would prove successful.
Medical City Children’s Hopital
“It’s an emotional event,” said Dr. Tom Renard, the lead pediatric surgeon on the operation. “When we started, I told the group: we don’t know what the outcome is. We’ll do the very best we can. We’ve been entrusted–we’ve been given a set of skills, and we’ve developed them along the way, all of us have, and we’re going to use that as a team. And as a team we’re going to do the very best we can to provide these kids with the very best care we can.”
“We are so thrilled and so excited, and very nervous about learning everything that we need to learn to be able to take care of these babies as well as they have been taken care of here,” their mother Jenni Ezell, said, as she fought back tears. “We’re just so excited.”
