Conjoined twins Abby and Brittany Hensel have opened up on what their life was like after entering the world of work.
The now-34-year-olds, from Minnesota, have been joined since birth but that hasn’t stopped them from living life to the fullest.
They graduated from Bethel University with majors in education in 2012 and have since gone on to become teachers.
The conjoined twins, suffer from a rare medical condition which is known as dicephalic parapagus twins, which gives them the appearance of having two heads and one body.
It’s such a rare condition that only a few people with it survive until adulthood, and it is considered better not to try and separate the twins as they share almost everything internally.
In this instance, each woman has her own heart, stomach, spine and lungs, and they each control one leg and one arm each of the conjoined body.
This means that they can eat, write and complete other tasks separately, but they need to work together for things that require multiple limbs such as walking or driving (which they do!).
All in all, when working together, the sisters can drive a car, play the piano, ride a bike and participate in sports, and they also work together in their jobs as teachers.
They each have their own driver’s license and had to pass their test separately, as the state of Minnesota requires both of them to hold their own license.
The sisters reached fame after appearing on TV several times, first in 1996 on The Oprah Winfrey Show and then on documentaries Joined for Life and Joined at Birth.
They also featured on the UK TV show Extraordinary People, and starred in their own TLC reality show Abby & Brittany, which aired in 2012 and followed the sisters as they graduated from university and started working as teachers.
These days the twins live a relatively low-key life as elementary school teachers and Abby recently hit headlines after it was reported that she tied the knot with her beau Josh Bowling in 2021.
Abby and Brittany teach fourth and fifth grade kids with a focus on math in a role they’ve held since 2013.
However, strangely, even though they are required to register separately for numerous things, they only get paid one salary for working their job.
Abby told the BBC in 2013: “As maybe experience comes in we’d like to negotiate a little bit, considering we have two degrees and because we are able to give two different perspectives or teach in two different ways.”
“One can be teaching and one can be monitoring and answering questions,” Brittany said. “So in that sense we can do more than one person.”