Last year, conjoined twins Carmen and Lupita Andrade graciously opened up to TODAY.com about what it's like to share a body with another person. The 23-year-old sisters, who live in Connecticut, also have an FAQ pinned to their joint TikTok account — and it's worth a watch.
In the video, Carmen and Lupita answer the questions they get asked over and over again.
“If one of us is tired, we both don’t have to both be tired because we have two separate brains,” Carmen begins. “Yes, one of us can be awake and one of us can be asleep because, again, different brains. We are two separate people.”
Next, Carmen tackles the topic of death.
“We share a bloodstream, so eventually sepsis will kick in and obviously within hours or days the other one will die,” she explains. “But we’re not dead, so why always ask us that?”
What happens if one of them commits a crime and is sentenced to prison?
“Never been through that process, so how would we have that kind of knowledge?” Carmen quips.
Carmen also addresses her and Lupita’s shared reproductive system and explains they both experienced pelvic pain when they had endometriosis.
“So you do the math of your weird inappropriate questions about sex,” she says.
If they were to drink alcohol or smoke marijuana, they would both experience the effects. They feel full at two different rates because they have separate stomachs. They also have their own identification cards and social security numbers because again — different people.
Carmen’s boyfriend Daniel is only dating Carmen.
“We can’t have kids, we don’t want kids and my partner feels the same way,” Carmen says.
Last year, Carmen told TODAY.com that she met Daniel on the dating app Hinge in 2020.
“I never tried to hide the fact that I’m a conjoined twin, which meant I got a lot of messages from guys with fetishes. I knew right off the bat that Daniel was different from the others, because he didn’t lead with a question about my condition," she said. "I have social anxiety, and I’ve ended up canceling dates at the last minute, but I felt calm on the way there."
Carmen noted that Daniel and Lupita are good friends. Lupita told TODAY.com that she is asexual.
"It’s funny because I stay up later than Lupita, but when Daniel’s sleeps over, I fall asleep quickly — and he stays up talking with her,” she said.
In March, TODAY.com revealed that conjoined twins Abby Hensel tied the knot with Josh Bowling, a nurse and United States Army veteran. Abby and Brittany Hensel, who starred in the TLC reality series “Abby and Brittany," are now 34 and teach fifth grade in Minnesota.
Abby and Brittany, like Carmen and Lupita, share a bloodstream and all organs below the waist.
Though it’s difficult for many to imagine what it’s like to be physically connected to another person, Carmen told TODAY she and Lupita don’t get sick of each other.
"Sometimes at the end of the day, we’re just exhausted and we don’t want to talk. That’s when we’ll go on different devices and do our own thing,” she said. “I have my laptop to do schoolwork, and Lupita will put on headphones and listen to music or go on her phone. We’ve been conjoined our whole life, so it’s not like we miss our independence. It’s all we’ve ever known, right?”