A formerly conjoined twin who lost her sister to a rare condition is using social media to raise awareness.
Gabrielle "Gabby" Garcia opened up about her unique life experience. Karen Swarens, Gabby's mom, found out she was pregnant with conjoined twins 12 weeks into her pregnancy. She wasn't familiar with the condition.
A specialist recommended that Karen's mom get a late-term abortion. Karen's mom refused. As she met with more medical professionals, she held to her position. It took her months before finding a doctor willing to work with her.
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Twins Gabby and Micheala were born at 36 weeks. The girls were born attached at the hip. They shared a pair of legs and kidneys, a bladder, and intestines. Gabby and Micheala were conjoined for nine months before undergoing surgery to separate them.
The sisters didn't suffer further complications until they were 13 years old, when both fell ill. While Gabby recovered, Micheala died. As she worked through the devastating loss of her twin, Gabby became determined to share their story. Now she's using TikTok to do just that.
This story first appeared on LittleThings in November 2020.
Karen Swarens was 12 weeks into her pregnancy when she learned she was pregnant with conjoined twins. The new mom didn't know what that meant at first. When she went to a specialist, they recommended a late-term abortion.
"I absolutely refused," Karen told East Idaho News.
"I couldn't find anyone to take care of me for months after that. I went without medical care for a few months until I could find someone that would help me and not want me to abort."
Karen welcomed twin girls at 36½ weeks. Gabrielle and Micheala were born attached at the hip. The baby girls shared a pair of legs and kidneys, a bladder, and intestines. They remained conjoined for around eight months before undergoing surgery.
The separation surgery was supposed to take 24 hours. It went better than expected, however, and took only 12 hours.
During the surgery, the girls lost their stomach walls, which were replaced with surgical mesh. Karen was told the girls should recover without issue.
Sadly, that changed in 2011. Micheala was hospitalized with an infection, and Gabby wasn't too far behind. Both girls had to have surgery due to the infection of the surgical mesh.
"You see a lot of the times how dangerous surgical mesh can be because it's kind of like a foreign object in the body, and sometimes our bodies reject it," Gabby said.
Gabby recovered from the infection without issue. Micheala's infection had already reached her bloodstream, however. She developed a fungal infection and went septic. Micheala died on November 5, 2011. It was just one day after Gabby was discharged from the hospital. The twins were 13.
"I sit here and I wonder until I'm going crazy, all the what-ifs," Gabby said.
"They say that time really is supposed to make everything better and make it easier, but some days I feel like it hurts more than the first day that it happened."
Gabby had an incredibly hard time dealing with it. She didn't talk much about her loss until a few months ago when she decided to make a change.
Gabby was ready to talk about Micheala and share their story. She started making videos about it on TikTok. When she started, she had just 80 followers.
"People are so curious, I think mostly because our condition is so rare," Gabby said.
"I have people reaching out to me that deal with similar things that I go through, health-wise. I have people reaching out to me who've also lost their twin sister. It's opened a lot of doors for me to talk to a lot of different kinds of people."
Her following began growing pretty quickly. Gabby's first video about being a conjoined twin has over 9 million views to date. She's gotten the opportunity to open up about the heartbreak of losing Micheala.
She's also gotten to answer some of the questions that people might be too scared to ask her face-to-face. Some she's fielded include which sister got the belly button, how they decided on what shoes to wear, and whether or not she can have kids. She's enjoying the opportunity to educate people on the unique situation.
Gabby's now facing another difficult battle. She was recently diagnosed with a brain tumor that's unrelated to being a conjoined twin. Still, she's trying to live life to the fullest in Micheala's memory.
"There's a saying that I always go by: 'It’ll all be OK in the end, and if it's not OK, then it's not the end,'" Gabby said.
"I always live by that. I'm like, 'This is just a mountain you're going over right now, and it's going to be OK.'"
Karen is proud that Gabby has found a way to speak out on her experience and honor her sister.
"I like hearing her be able to tell the story that she wanted to tell so much with her sister," she said.
"But it does bring back a lot of memories."
