This Thanksgiving, Kristen Maurer has reason to be especially thankful to her identical twin, Kelly McCarthy. They've shared a lot in their lives, so when McCarthy was diagnosed with breast cancer, she urged her sister to get tested, too.
“You just do everything together, don't you?” the doctor asked Maurer before telling her that she, too, had the disease.
Now the 34-year-old twins from Crown Point, Ind., are sharing a medical rarity: Maurer donated skin and fat tissue for McCarthy's breast reconstruction. “It wasn't a question; she didn't have to ask me,” said Maurer, a college enrollment counselor.
The first successful organ transplant was between identical twins in Boston in 1954 and involved a kidney. Since then, identical twins have been involved in many other transplant operations. But breast reconstruction between identical twins has been done only a few times; Maurer and McCarthy, a nurse, are among the youngest patients.
Identical twins are ideal donors because their skin, tissue and organs are perfect genetic matches, explained Dr. David Song, chief of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the University of Chicago Medical Center. And that eliminates the need for anti-rejection medicine, he said.
Song performed the twins' surgeries in mid-November and both fared well.
McCarthy said her sister's sacrifice, “just so I can feel better about myself ... is really humbling.”
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