TV changes conjoined twins146; life

Television crews knock on their door at all hours. A Hollywood producer is chasing the rights to their story. People want to know if they ha...

Television crews knock on their door at all hours. A Hollywood producer is chasing the rights to their story. People want to know if they have an agent. The parents of the formerly conjoined Guatemalan twins: Will their lives ever be the same? The father, Wenceslao Quiej, who until recently earned about 2 a day bagging bananas, hopes not.

8216;8216;I want to return to Guatemala and have a better future than the one I had,8217;8217; he said on Monday, after a long day dealing with People magazine, The Los Angeles Times and NBC8217;s Today Show.

A medical philanthropy group learned their conjoined daughters faced an uncertain fate living in a Guatemalan hospital and brought them to the hospital at University of California where a medical team separated the girls. Today, Quiej, 21, and his wife, Alba Leticia Alvarez, 22, stay at a cousin8217;s LA apartment, visiting their daughters in a hospital where TV crews wander the paediatric floor and occasionally erupt into loud squabbles. 8216;8216;They8217;ve been interviewing me every day,8217;8217; Quiej said.

Instant fame followed a 22-hour operation that has touched hearts around the world. Already, a foundation is talking about creating a job for Quiej in Guatemala City so he and his wife can be with their daughters while the twins get the long-term medical care doctors say they will need. He currently holds a 65-day visa that he would like to extend.

An international medical charity, Healing the Children, alerted UCLA Dr Jorge Lazareff. The paediatric neurosurgeon flew to Guatemala to see the twins, and in June the charity paid to fly the girls and their mother to LA.

The surgery was complex: Surgeons had to cut through the bone, redirect shared blood vessels and cover the exposed brain with skin. 8216;8216;In two months, if they8217;re running around and going at each other as sisters do, we8217;ll know they8217;re coming along,8217;8217; said Irwin Weiss, the paediatric care specialist.

The doctors have donated their services and UCLA hopes to recoup the cost of the twins8217; care, estimated at 1.5 million, through donations. The family8217;s LA-based relatives know press attention is the best way to drum up support, and they try to persuade the couple to give interviews at the hospital. But when they do, they are often dismayed by the questions. Quiej said a reporter asked his wife which girl she would choose if they could save just one. And Alvarez got upset when photographers had been allowed to take the babies8217; pictures before she arrived at the hospital. LATWP