Covering the Brain

The doctors were making progress last week in their effort to give a normal brain covering to Rodney Dee Brodie, one of the 15-month-old Siamese twins who were born joined at the tops of their skulls. For the second time since the operation which separated them (TIME, Dec. 29), Plastic Surgeon Paul W. Greeley was busy with skin grafts. First, he had taken skin from Rodney's forehead and moved it back to cover part of the open brainpan. Now he set about taking skin from the baby's back to cover his forehead.

Each operation lasted two hours or more, and each time Rodney stood it well. This week, he was again taking cereal by spoon, holding his own bottle, and playing pat-a-cake. One-fourth of his brain still had only its natural covering of parchment-like dura mater. That would mean another operation soon. And eventually he would have to have a hard top (bone, metal or plastic) for his skull. But the University of Illinois doctors were already so encouraged by Rodney's progress that they had let his special nurses go.

His twin, Roger, gave no such hopeful signs. He was in a deep coma, barely staying alive on an ounce of formula every half-hour by a tube through the nose. The doctors could not be sure what minute might be his last.

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