By Alex Leff
Tico Times Staff | aleff@ticotimes.net

Yurelia and Fiorella Rocha were walking, talking and even playfully biting at one another at the Marriott Hotel near Costa Rica's Juan Santamaría International Airport yesterday – their first day back on home turf as separate children.

Groggy at first, encircled by snapping photographers and television cameras after a flight from California, the formerly conjoined twins were handed toys and lipstick to play with, and soon warmed up to the reporters.

The 29-month-old Rocha girls were born attached at the chest and abdomen, heart and liver.

With the help of a U.S. charity, Mending Kids International, the twins, accompanied by their mother, María Elizabeth Rocha, and teenage sister, Cintia López, were able to obtain the high-risk operation in November at Stanford University in California.

Facing a 50% chance of survival, according to Dr. Carlos Esquivel, who oversaw the liver operation, Yurelia and Fiorella recovered more quickly than expected and flew home yesterday as individuals.

“As you can see, they've become quite normal little girls,” said Cris Embleton, founder and executive director of Mending Kids International.

“And they have amazing personalities: Fiorella is very fearless and adventuresome; Yurelia is very shy and quiet,” she said, echoing the mother's words at a press conference last month in California, the twins' first public appearance since the operation (TT, Jan. 25).

Embleton thanked the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford and lead surgeon Gary Hartmen for carrying out the procedure.

“The day the girls were separated, they (the doctors) started at 7 in the morning to put all the wires in and by 11:30 they were separated and by 12:30 one of them was already in the ICU (intensive care unit),” she said.

A very grateful María Elizabeth Rocha, 40, thanked God and the people of Costa Rica and her native Nicaragua for showing concern about the fate of Yurelia and Fiorella, her 10th and 11th children.

Since the operation, it hasn't all been doctor visits and media events. Embleton said there were fun times too.

“Two days before we came down here we did what every child who comes to America wants to do, and that is we took them to Disney Land,” she said.