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Separation surgery nears for 3-year-old 'little warriors'

See them on video here [wm.wkyc.gannett.edgestreams.net]. Or watch Good Morning America (ABC) on Friday, March 30.

By Regina McEnery
Newhouse News Service

March 28, 2007

DALLAS -- It's time to leave for Friday evening church services, but 3-year-old Anastasia Dogaru, decked out in a blue denim jumper, white frilly shirt and shiny pink shoes, isn't quite ready. Her conjoined twin, Tatiana, still needs a hair tie just like hers. Preferably purple.

Although Anastasia can't see her sister's face, she acts as Tatiana's protector. She knows when one of them isn't fully dressed. As she reaches behind to feel her sister's blond head, she points out the glaring omission to her mother, getting nowhere.

"Ana, Tati, we have to leave," Claudia Dogaru says impatiently as she rushes the twins and her 6-year-old daughter, Maria, out the door.

Anastasia must lead the way to the family's blue mini-van while Tatiana clings to her sister's back with one hand and clutches her mother's hand with the other.

Claudia Dogaru groans as she straps the girls in twice to keep them from slipping. They are a little cranky as Dogaru begins the 20-minute trip to the tiny Byzantine Catholic parish on the outskirts of Dallas. Before long, they doze lightly, the missing hair tie all but forgotten.

Although navigating can be difficult for the twins, they are in many ways normal little girls.

They are captivated by television, cell phones and the power of a Magic Marker.

They love their play kitchen and pretty much anything Maria does. (That's where they developed their affection for hair accessories.)

Anastasia, who faces frontward and has an air of self-confidence about her, is developmentally on target. Her shyer, quieter twin lags three months behind.

As Anastasia and Tatiana frolicked with their sister at a playground, Claudia Dogaru talked about the risky operation that she hopes will put them on the road to independent lives.

A surgical team at University Hospitals' Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital in Cleveland will try to separate the brains in four stages, the last stage being the most difficult. Rainbow hopes to begin the first surgery in May, so Dogaru and her daughters will move to Cleveland in early April.

Dogaru said she knows there is a chance one or both of her daughters will not survive the operation. On the other hand, Tatiana has not gained weight in three months, unusual for a toddler. And because Anastasia has no functioning kidneys, Tatiana's must work hard to serve both girls. The twins could not survive on one kidney if one were to fail.

"They are my little warriors, my little fighters," Dogaru said.

She and her husband, Alin, a Byzantine Catholic priest, are native Romanians. When Anastasia and Tatiana were delivered by Caesarean section in January 2004 at a hospital in Rome, doctors didn't hold out much hope.

It was Alin's sister in Toronto who pointed the family to Children's Medical Center Dallas, where a team of surgeons had just separated Egyptian twins joined at the head.

Alin contacted the World Craniofacial Foundation, an organization headquartered in Dallas and founded by a plastic surgeon who had helped separate the Egyptian boys. That surgeon, Dr. Kenneth Salyer, took an interest in the Dogaru case, and by the fall of 2004, Claudia Dogaru and her 9-month-old twins were on their way to Texas.

Dogaru prefers not to dwell on the two years she spent waiting to hear whether the Dallas team would take her case. She is grateful Rainbow stepped in, and she looks forward to making new friends in Cleveland.

Her husband, who visited her sporadically from Italy, now volunteers at a parish in Canton, Ohio, so the family will be together for the surgery, she said. She believes their faith will get them through the coming months.

"These little creatures changed and touched a lot of lives and changed, definitely, my life," Claudia Dogaru said. "I don't know why, but I never blamed [God] for this. They are a joy every day."

Copyright � 2007, Chicago Tribune