A veteran pediatrician has dedicated a major part of his life to the worthwhile cause of giving conjoined twins separate bodies, and thus independent, rewarding lives.

One day in mid-Autumn, 2012, Dr. Nguyen Thanh Liem, the director of Hanoi’s Central Pediatrics Hospital, received two special guests at his office.

“We’re Ha and Ninh from Quang Ninh province. We were conjoined and you separated us 16 years ago,” the two pretty teen girls said by way of introduction.

“I don’t think I can meet you two again like this,” Liem emotionally said, smiling at Nguyen Phuong Ha and Nguyen Phuong Ninh, the conjoined twins on whom he led an operation to separate the two in July, 1996.

Heartwarming smiles

The doctor Ha and Ninh were meeting was no different from the one from their father’s memories and descriptions.

“Dr. Liem has heartwarming smiles, indeed. On your operation day, while I was waiting restlessly outside, a doctor came out and gave me a warm smile and reassuring words,” Ha and Ninh’s father told them.

“I didn’t know he was Dr. Liem until later, but his smile really relieved my anxiety,” their father added.

Liem’s smiles have soothed the frantic worries and nagging anxieties of all those who have had their conjoined twins surgically separated at the hospital.

While Le Anh Luan, the father of Thu Cuc and Thuy An, conjoined twins who were separated in October, 2003, was tormented by the fear that his girls wouldn’t make it, he received that smile, a pat on the shoulder and encouraging words from Dr. Liem.

These gestures reassured him, and heartened him to fight together with his two little daughters.

Deep gratitude

Numerous parents of the separated twins are deeply indebted to Dr. Liem.

“Dear Uncle Liem, our mom told us that you raised money and collected milk to help us with our operation,” An wrote in a recent letter to Liem.

“My mom told us to always try our best in our studies as a token of deep gratitude to you. This year we are in fifth grade and we are both high-performing students,” she proudly added.

“Every Tet holiday, Cuc and An are always the first to call me and wish my family a ‘Happy New Year’,” Liem said with a smile.

The parents of conjoined twins Bao and Toan, (Cu and Co at that time), who were surgically separated by a team led by Dr. Liem in December 2008, also said they will never forget the doctor’s great deeds and support.

Intense pressure

“We were put under a lot of pressure when it comes to operations to separate the conjoined twins,” Liem said.

According to Liem, doctors at the hospital didn’t have much experience in twin separation surgeries prior to the Ha-Ninh (Phuong-Ly then) case.

Among the conjoined twins the hospital has admitted, Ha-Ninh were one of the less complicated cases.

They were conjoined in the abdominal area and had some abnormalities in their umbilical blood vessels, but had separate digestive systems, Liem added.

“But we had almost no experience with such cases, so we couldn’t make any predictions,” he recalled.

They could only tell Ha and Ninh’s parents that the surgery might not be successful.

“Their parents’ nods and inevitable expectations placed us under tremendous pressure, but we finally did it,” Liem added.

The surgery to separate conjoined twins Nghia and Dan, which took place in August 2002, was more technically challenging, as they shared several organs.

Despite careful consultations and calculations, as the operation got underway, the entire surgical team was astonished to find that the two boys also shared a bile stem/duct, Liem recalled.

“We were quite confused by this unexpected situation,” the veteran pediatrician noted.

The doctors then decided to let Dan have the bile stem/duct, while Nghia’s intestines were connected to his liver.

Only Nghia survived, while Dan passed away two months after the operation, Liem sadly recounted.

“This again placed us under intense pressure when preparing for the Cuc-An surgery, which took place less than one year after that,” he shared.

The Cuc-An surgery attracted public attention and their condition was very complicated, Liem explained.

“But the experience we garnered from previous operations helped make the surgery a big success,” he noted.

A dedicated doctor

Conjoined twin cases have kept Dr. Liem constantly busy and completely preoccupied.

During any set of twins’ hospitalization, the seasoned doctor orders his staff to constantly update him on the twins’ progress, including even the slightest changes.

When there are twins at the hospital, Dr. Liem leaves his cell phone on ‘Ring’ and keeps it by his bed.

Seven days after Cuc and An’s surgery, Cuc began bleeding from her digestive system at 2 in the morning.

While sleeping soundly at home, upon hearing the news, Liem instantly woke up and rushed to the hospital in chilly weather.

At the hospital, he had to warm his frozen hands before seeing to Cuc.

Even after the twins were separated and returned home, the doctor often received frantic calls from their parents whenever there was something wrong with them.

These calls left him restless, as he would call them continuously during the following days until he found out that the kids were better.

“I always have special affections for less fortunate children. I consider it my destiny and a great blessing to take part in many surgeries to separate conjoined twins,” Liem confided.

“Whenever I make the first cut in such an operation, I feel both nervous and blessed,” he added.

However, in Liem’s efforts to give independent bodies to conjoined twins, there have been failures and tragedies.

“In a number of cases in which the conjoinment was too complicated and the twins’ condition was too weak, we lost one or even both of them,” Liem sadly recalled.

“This really agonizes me,” the doctor shared.

This feeling has driven Liem to conduct thorough research on conjoined twins over the last several years, so that he can learn from medical advances in order to help with future operations.

The medical records of conjoined twins hold particular significance in his personal archives. “My biggest hope is that more conjoined twins will live normal, rewarding lives, just like Ha-Ninh, Cuc-An and Cu-Co,” Liem shared.

“In many developed countries, doctors usually do not surgically separate conjoined twins. With limited resources, doctors in our country have tried to separate them and give them independent, happy lives. This is a source of great pride for Vietnamese medicine,” Lao Dong quoted Professor Nguyen Thu Nhan, chair of the Vietnam Pediatrics Association, as saying.