The Story of a Double Take and Double Give

It may have looked like Dr. Rafael Mendez merely pulled Petra Martinez’s kidney out, held it up to the light and then stuck it back inside her last week in a Los Angeles hospital operating room.

But Mendez actually handed the kidney to his identical twin, Dr. Robert Mendez. And he placed it in Martinez’s identical twin, Anna Cortez.

The twin surgeons and patients celebrated the success of the unusual kidney transplant operation Monday as the sisters checked out of USC University Hospital, where the head-spinning medical procedure took place.

Cortez, 37, said she did not even have to ask her sister if she would donate a kidney to spare her from the dialysis treatments she needed to survive.

“I feel everything she feels and she feels everything I feel,” Martinez said.

And Rafael Mendez, 61, did not have to ask his brother in the next operating room if the transplant was a success, because he instinctively knew.

“Identical twins are nature’s ultimate clones,” Robert Mendez said.

It was coincidence that led the twin brothers to handle the transplant between twin sisters in twin operating rooms at the hospital southeast of downtown.

Robert Mendez of Pacific Palisades and Rafael Mendez of Bel-Air have teamed up for surgeries for 30 years--usually with Rafael removing the donor’s organ and Robert connecting it to the recipient.

Cortez, of Visalia, and Martinez, of San Jose, were born with a genetic abnormality that allowed urine from their bladders to flow backward into their kidneys. As teenagers, both underwent surgery to fix the problem. But the procedure was not completely successful for Cortez, who at the age of 16 began suffering from chronic kidney infection.

Doctors in Visalia, where Cortez, a mother of two, works as a housing authority clerk, referred her to USC University Hospital after Martinez volunteered to donate one of her kidneys when her twin began growing sicker and weaker.

Their own mother died last year after suffering kidney failure due to diabetes, Martinez said Monday.

“I wanted to give my sister life,” she said. “She didn’t even have to ask me. There’s a bond with twins that’s hard to explain.”

Martinez said she was prepared to carefully check the transplant surgeons’ credentials when she learned that they, too, are identical twins.

“Their being twins sealed it,” she said with a grin.

Although identical twins have identical internal organs that make for a perfect transplant match, the left kidney donated by Martinez had been damaged by infection during her most recent pregnancy. (She is also the mother of two.)

The Mendezes had hoped that the damaged kidney would work well enough to keep Cortez off dialysis for up to 10 years while she waited for a permanent donor transplant. But to their surprise, the damaged kidney sprang back to life after the transplant.

“It started functioning beautifully,” said Rafael Mendez.

“It started functioning immediately,” added Robert Mendez.

The brothers said they have operated together on two other sets of twins during their careers. As were the earlier twin transplants, the two-hour procedure on Jan. 18 was emotional for the pair.

“I felt incredibly close to them--we were family,” Robert Mendez said.

“It’s a unique experience. Twins have a bonding,” Rafael Mendez added.

As the twin patients left the hospital, the twin doctors presented them with a coffee table book about twins that includes a photograph of them wearing identical white doctors’ coats.

Robert Mendez joked that the handsome-looking one in the photo was him. Rafael Mendez kidded that the harder-working one in the photo was him.

Cortez and Martinez flashed identical smiles.

At both of them.