Progress of the Herrin twins' separation surgery
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• 9:22 a.m. Surgeons complete operation on Kendra and by 9:30 she'd been moved to the pediatric intensive care unit. Maliyah's already there.
The surgeries went "really, really well," according to coordinating surgeon Dr. Rebecka Meyers.
They were able to close the skin on both girls without having to leave any uncovered wounds or wound sponges, although they did employ synthetic dermis in place of some of Kendra's muscle.
The girls are both critically ill, however. Meyers describes them as swollen, in pain and with a lot of stress on their bodies, including the fact that the skin is "tighter" than they'd hoped it would be.
Meyers said the moment when the girls were separated and Kendra was carried to another operating room, 16 hours after the complex procedure began, was an emotional one. "I wept," she said simply.
"I've already told them I love them about a hundred times today," she said. "I'll tell them again."
The girls will face more surgeries in the future and reconstruction is a long-term process.
• 8:20 a.m.: Parents Jake and Erin Herrin were just told that Maliyah is out of surgery and on her way to the pediatric intensive care unit, after more than 25 hours of surgery. A separate team of surgeons is still reconstructing Kendra's abdominal wall and closing her wounds. The medical team now predicts she'll be out of the operating room in a couple of more hours.
• 5:10 a.m.: Plastic surgeons are beginning to reconstruct Kendra's abdominal wall, while another team has been working on Maliyah for some time. It's the home stretch, but "kind of a lengthy one," said Dr. Catherine deVries, urologist.
• 3:45 a.m.: Doctors are closing Maliyah's abdomen, a time-consuming process done in layers. They now say Maliyah's operation is apt to end about 6 a.m. Kendra's will take longer because they have not yet started closing her skin over the wound.
• 1:30 a.m.: Reconstruction of Kendra's abdominal wall is "quite a bit more complex" than Maliyah's. The latter had more muscle and soft tissue. Because she will need a kidney transplant, much of her skin was expanded to make sure there was enough. The challenge became covering Kendra's wound. The surgeons used synthetic dermis to help, but her surgery was expected to run longer than Maliyah's.
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