These Twins Shared One Kidney. Then Came the 26-Hour Surgery to Separate Them

Kendra and Maliyah Herrin were four years old when they lay in separate beds for the first time. The beds were side by side in a Utah intensive care unit. One sister had the kidney they had shared since birth. The other would need dialysis until she was ready for another operation.
Their mother, Erin, was already planning to give Maliyah one of her own kidneys.

For four years, every step took two

Born in Utah in 2002, Kendra and Maliyah were joined at the abdomen and pelvis. They shared a liver, part of their intestine, a pelvis and one functioning kidney. They had two legs between them, and each sister controlled one. A step across the room took coordination from both girls.

Before surgery, the twins talked about things they wanted to do afterward. They wanted to sleep in bunk beds and ride bikes. Kendra had a particular bike in mind. She wanted a princess bike, and she wanted to go fast.

Their parents, Erin and Jake, talked with the girls about the operation. The family had years to consider what separation would mean, and the doctors had to plan for two different recoveries. The kidney was in Kendra’s body. Once the sisters were separated, Maliyah would lose access to it. Doctors waited until she was older and better able to undergo a transplant.

The operation lasted through the night

In August 2006, the girls were taken into surgery at Primary Children’s Medical Center in Salt Lake City. The team had to divide shared organs, reconstruct each girl’s pelvis and close the surgical wounds. Each sister would keep the leg she had always controlled.

By late that evening, the twins had been physically separated. Hours of reconstruction still lay ahead. Maliyah was moved into intensive care the following morning. When the surgeons finished with Kendra, they put her bed next to her sister’s. The operation had lasted about 26 hours.

In September, family, friends and neighbors welcomed the girls home with balloons. There were purple ones for Kendra and yellow ones for Maliyah. The twins wanted to see their new beds. Soon Kendra was playing on the computer and Maliyah went out in a stroller. Both girls played with their little brothers.

Home still meant physical therapy, hospital visits and, for Maliyah, dialysis three times a week. The next operation was already part of the family’s plans.

Eight months later, their mother went into surgery too

On April 3, 2007, Erin donated her right kidney to Maliyah, who had just turned five. Erin went home first. Maliyah stayed in the hospital for further recovery and to give doctors time to adjust her medication. Later that month, she went home too.

The kidney worked for several years. When it eventually failed, Maliyah returned to dialysis. In an update in April 2018, the family described two years of waiting and repeated treatments. That May, Maliyah received a second kidney transplant. The family reported that the operation had gone better than they had expected.

The sisters had their own stories to tell

As children, both girls faced additional surgeries and learned ways to move independently. In 2010, a reporter documented Kendra practicing her balance on a new prosthetic leg. The same report showed Maliyah jumping on the trampoline at home. Each sister had her own way of getting around.

By 2019, they were high school seniors. When they spoke to the Deseret News, they talked about disability, inclusion and what it felt like when strangers took pictures without permission. They still remembered a man who photographed them at Disney World. The trip had been arranged through Make-A-Wish, and years later that encounter was still part of what they remembered about it.

Before the operation, people asked Kendra what she wanted to do after she and Maliyah were separated. The adults were thinking about dialysis, reconstruction and recovery. Kendra was thinking about a princess bike. She wanted to see how fast she could go.

PART 2: THE LIFE BEYOND THE HEADLINES

Years later, the girl who had wanted a princess bike had a driver’s license.
In their December 2019 interview with the Deseret News, Kendra shared that she had started driving. The sisters were approaching adulthood, and independence was becoming a practical question: how to get around, manage their equipment and make more decisions for themselves.
Kendra had also earned certification as a phlebotomist and was considering work drawing blood. Maliyah was still deciding what she wanted to do.
There was room for both answers.

After a childhood with so many medical decisions, choosing a future did not have to happen on anyone else’s schedule.
Their differences showed up in smaller ways, too. They disagreed about food and where to eat with friends. Maliyah liked spaghetti; Kendra did not. Their shared history had never meant identical tastes.
The same interview described a close circle of friends and the sisters’ preference for respectful questions over staring. They wanted people to ask permission before discussing their bodies, rather than treating curiosity as an invitation to photograph them. Deseret News
These details deserve space beside the account of their surgery.
A medical milestone can be measured in hours. A life cannot.
It unfolds in friendships, schoolwork, changing plans and decisions that seem unremarkable until someone has had to work especially hard to make them.
Readers can easily reach the end of an account like theirs and admire the surgeons, the parents and the determination required to keep going. All of that belongs in the story. But admiration also asks something of the person doing the admiring.
How do we behave when someone with a visible disability enters the room?
Do we speak to them directly? Do we allow them to decide what they want to share? Can we accept that they may simply want to finish their meal, enjoy an outing or spend time with a friend?
Respect is often practiced in these small moments, where there is no audience and no remarkable gesture to make.
We can put the phone away. We can introduce ourselves. We can listen without demanding a story in return.
And we can leave room for uncertainty. A young person should be allowed to consider a career, change direction or have no answer yet. Surviving a difficult childhood does not create an obligation to have the rest of life figured out.
The childhood wish for a princess bike is moving because it is so recognizable. A child imagined something she wanted to try.
That wish gives the reader somewhere useful to end—and somewhere better to begin the next time they meet someone whose body looks different from their own.
Begin with the person.
Let them decide how much of their story comes next.

PART 3: THE KIDNEY HER FATHER COULDN’T GIVE HER

Maliyah’s father was not a match.
But he donated a kidney anyway.
Behind the independence described in Part 2 was another chapter, one that takes us back to 2018—before the driver’s license and the conversations about life after high school.
Maliyah needed a second kidney transplant.
Her mother had already given her one. Now her father, Jake, would help through a different route. The Deseret News later reported that he participated in a donation chain: his kidney went to another recipient, while Maliyah received a compatible kidney from someone else.
A father’s gift had reached beyond his own family.
And another person’s gift had reached his daughter. Deseret News
It is easy to describe that arrangement in a few sentences. Those sentences cannot contain everything it meant to the people waiting for the operations.
For the Herrins, the wait had already stretched across years.

In an April 2018 update, the family described Maliyah’s return to dialysis after the kidney her mother donated had failed. They had spent two years waiting for another transplant.
Then, on April 2, they received news that one was coming.
When the family shared the announcement, Maliyah described what she hoped would change.
“I feel like I will be free,” she said.
She wanted more time with friends and family, a chance to swim and enough energy to enjoy it.
That was the future she pictured.
There is something quietly devastating about such an ordinary wish. Swimming. Seeing friends. Having energy left for the people you love.
Things that can disappear into the background of one person’s day can become the center of someone else’s hopes.
The announcement also contained a request: the family wanted the donor’s privacy protected.
Even while sharing their relief, they drew a boundary around someone else’s life.
Readers did not need a name or a photograph to understand the generosity involved. herrintwins.blogspot.com
By May, the waiting had become preparation.
According to the family’s transplant update, Maliyah entered the hospital on May 23, the night before the operation. Medicines and monitoring came first. The next day would bring the transplant they had been anticipating.
On May 26, the family published the news: the operation had happened, and they reported that it had gone better than expected. herrintwins.blogspot.com
For anyone following from a distance, that announcement could have felt like the ending.
The kidney had arrived.
The surgery was over.
But the meaning of that news would become clearer afterward, in the small changes the family could finally describe.
In their July 2 update, they reported that Maliyah was recovering well. Her catheter had been removed, she could swim again, and she was much less exhausted.
The wish she had spoken about before surgery had become part of her life.
That detail deserves a moment.
A teenager had said she wanted to swim.
Later, her family could say she was swimming.
No elaborate description is needed to make that matter.
Yet the same July update carried news about Kendra, too. She was recovering from surgery for an infection and had learned to administer antibiotics through her IV PICC line. herrintwins.blogspot.com
Two sisters appeared in the same family update, each with her own recovery.
One could return to the water.
The other was managing another course of treatment.
Their lives could not be gathered into a single sentence declaring that everything was finally easy.
Good news and difficult work existed beside each other.
Perhaps that is why the smaller details are so important. They keep the people visible inside a story full of medical milestones. They remind us that recovery is experienced in an afternoon, an activity, a task learned, a little more energy than before.
And the sisters were beginning to choose how those details reached the world.
By March 2019, KSL was reporting on their YouTube videos. They shared their history, but they also made funny videos. Maliyah had documented her transplant and recovery. KSL.com
The camera was taking on a different role.
Earlier in their story, a stranger had used one without asking.
Now they could choose to turn one on themselves.
They could decide what to explain, what to laugh about and what to share.
That choice opens the next chapter.
After years of being the subject of other people’s stories, what did Kendra and Maliyah want people to see when they told their own?
END PART 3

PART 4: THIS TIME, THEY CHOSE THE CAMERA

The stranger’s photograph had taken something from them: the choice to decide how they were seen.
Their own videos gave them a way to make that choice themselves.
That is where the question at the end of Part 3 leads.
What did Kendra and Maliyah want people to see?
Sometimes, something funny.
In a March 2019 report, KSL described the sisters making videos about their lives alongside lighter, humorous content. Kendra explained that they wanted their videos to help people feel positive. Their father said making them had strengthened their confidence and given them an interest to pursue.
They had something to create.
They had an audience to speak to.
And their medical history did not have to be the subject of every conversation.
The same report included a detail that would never have made the headlines about their separation: they took turns cooking dinner.
After so many accounts of what doctors and parents had done for them, here was a glimpse of what they did for their household.
Dinner still needed making.
Someone had to take a turn.
There is room in their story for that responsibility, just as there is room for operations and recovery. Growing up happens in ordinary tasks, too.
The sisters also described enjoying high school. They said they had not been bullied there. KSL.com
That matters because it prevents another assumption from taking over their lives: that every encounter must have been cruel, every classroom unwelcoming, every friendship difficult.
Their experience included belonging.
It also included moments they wanted people to understand better.
By November 2019, Kendra and Maliyah had participated in a live YouTube question-and-answer session with Gerald Nebeker of Orange Socks. In his January

2020 newsletter, he recalled their conversation and the interview about inclusion that followed in December.
Their advice was direct: speak respectfully, avoid staring and approach people with kindness.
Maliyah’s contribution was just two words.
“Be nice.” Orangesocks.org
The simplicity of that request leaves very little room for excuses.
No one needs to know a person’s surgical history before treating them courteously.
No one needs an explanation of a wheelchair, a walker or a missing limb before saying hello.
And someone who shares part of their life online still gets to decide what remains private.
A video is an invitation to watch that video.
It does not turn the person in it into public property.
The distinction becomes especially important in the Herrins’ story. They could welcome an audience for something they had made and still object to a stranger photographing them without permission.
Both choices belonged to them.
Yet speaking publicly about inclusion did not put the rest of life on hold.
In their December 2019 interview, Kendra described missing the first month of her senior year because an infection required surgeries. She also spoke proudly about earning A’s and B’s.
There, in one account, were two things readers might otherwise separate: a student dealing with serious health problems, and a student pleased with her grades.
Neither detail erased the other.
As adulthood approached, the sisters were also considering the practical demands of greater independence. Their equipment required help with heavy lifting. They expected their medical care to move beyond the children’s hospital they had known for years. www.deseret.com
The next stage would involve decisions that a successful operation could not settle for them.
How would support fit into the lives they wanted?
Which responsibilities could they take on, and where would they still need someone beside them?
These were questions about everyday life with consequences far beyond a camera screen.
For years, people had followed their story by asking what the doctors would do next.
Now another question was coming into focus.
What would Kendra and Maliyah choose next?
The children once photographed in adjoining hospital beds were approaching a future that would ask them to speak for themselves in new ways.
And telling their story was only the beginning.
The next chapter was about having a greater say in how they lived it.
END PART 4