During that time, my staff worked hard at keeping the twins relaxed with day hikes into the rainforest, trips to the beach, and an afternoon of whitewater rafting. I began the girls on a diet of antidepressants to counteract the psychological stresses of so many operations and to help blunt their inferiority complexes.

Even before the first operation and undoubtedly related to our careful regimen of metabolic invigoration and psychological encouragement, I was delighted to learn that Honey had shed a pound and Apples added several ounces.

As the big day approached, the girls became noticeably giddy, so much so that I had to coach them to try to act restrained (I believe I may have used the word "devastated") when in front of any cameras, at least until after their treatment was in full-swing.

The twins' understanding of fat surgery didn't begin to be accurate. Even aggressive operations involve manipulating little actual weight. The object is to give beauty a shape.

In technical undertakings, however, understanding or lack thereof rarely present big problems.

A person takes her car to the mechanic to get it fixed. Exactly how the mechanic fixes it is usually known only to him because most customers find such details either far too technical or utterly boring. As long as the car runs when they pick it up and the price seems reasonable, everyone is happy.

Personally, I stay fit by eating a healthy diet and exercising daily, accepting the changes of age as inevitable. While I have helped out my wife with measured intervention in a few strategic locations, I would never consider the use of fat surgery on myself. I prefer to stick with what's natural. The artificial I do strictly for a living.

The logistical demands were more complex than simply preparing for the surgical procedures, which, after all, I had performed thousands of times.

My office is modest in size and sports a single fully-equipped operating room. Fortunately, only Honey would be placed under general anesthesia for her large-volume liposuction and thus need extensive monitoring and emergency supplies.

By borrowing some spare equipment from my dentist, moving out a desk and two bookcases, and replacing red shag carpet with gray vinyl tiles, a consultation office was quickly converted to a second operating room sufficient to accommodate Apples' relatively minimal needs as a human pincushion.

Our biggest hurdle was to find the room needed to position the extra lights, cameras, sound equipment, and non-surgical personnel. Jorge assured me that the use of wide-angle lenses would make the tight space look much bigger and that his film crew was used to working under suboptimal conditions. With medical history about to be make, it needed to be well-documented.

I showed the twins the operating rooms and they giggled. While I continued their nutritional supplements at full strength, I promptly cut their antidepressant dosage in half.

Prior to liposuction, fat to be removed is injected with a "tumescent" fluid mixture that helps to loosen it. Later, the vacuumed aspirate consists of this priming fluid, lost blood, and, of course, fat. To lessen the risks, the total amount suctioned is limited to no more than six liters, which weighs in at about twelve pounds.

After spinning the aspirate in a centrifuge to remove the blood and fluid, one is left with two or three liters of fat. Because the injected fat cells must be placed close to existing blood vessels, anything more than a few droplets at any one site is too much. To use all of the harvested fat would require thousands of injections. Thus, only a fraction of what was available could be utilized, and only a fraction of that fraction would finally survive.

With the goal of effecting a major readjustment of weight, such built-in limitations made the surgical process clearly impractical. Hungry Honey was much too bloated for five or six pounds to slim her down, while Anorexic Apples was too skinny for a few ounces to fill her out. Thousands of droplets added up not to an ocean of fat but just a drop in the bucket. No wonder the twins' very first plastic surgeon had told them to get lost. No doctor worth his salt would have ever considered such a slow and painful restoration.

So, was the situation hopeless? Correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't most impossible dilemmas finally overcome by looking past the obvious and thinking outside the box?

And while great answers to great questions have a way of emerging slowly, I had no intention of turning this case into a lifetime affair. Dr. Antoñio Barejas Pascali Enriquez was (and is!) far too talented a plastic surgeon for that.

Although, as Jorge Godinez taught me during my short stay in Los Angeles, talent will carry a gifted person only so far. What, he asked, makes the artist of modest ability be seen by others as more exceptional than he really is? What allows the mediocre politician to rise above the competition? How can the capable surgeon command a fee three times that of his equal or more able colleagues?

Without the determination to go against the grain, high aptitude will take a talented person nowhere.

The producer sent out a final call, and Dr. Godinez headed back to the set.

The first dual-operation went off without a hitch, but I will not bore you with surgical details (although, if you are interested, they are available for viewing on DVD-ROM, Volume I-III, $59.99 each, plus postage and handling, by clicking here). To be quite frank, I didn't much bore myself with the details either and instead hurried through the motions just as fast as I could.

I liposuctioned from Honey's abundant mid-section and then injected into Apples' missing middle, reasoning that fat taken from one anatomical location would do best if injected into the same environment.

Was I correct? More so than anybody could have predicted. Three weeks later, Honey weighed 6.5 pounds less while Apples had gained an unheard of 4.7!

Word of our project "leaked out" and the journalists began to make inquiries. Not to be distracted, I consented to two phone interviews but allowed no on-site visits.

Of course, that only attracted more attention and soon my receptionist was overwhelmed.

Because I am a proponent of high ethical standards, I would like to allude briefly to the subject of exploitation but only to dismiss it. Helping others while simultaneously helping oneself is neither unfair, dishonest, nor manipulative.

Correct me if I am wrong. Don't some religions seeking donations in the collection basket claim that charity will be rewarded threefold (not to mention all that talk about points gained in one's quest for eternal salvation)? To me, that sounds like greed.

In fact, I found myself beginning to treat the twins more like cherished pets than regular patients, doting over them like a loving master responsible for providing what they couldn't provide for themselves, including making major decisions on matters of some importance.

Because the girls recovered rapidly, I scheduled their recurring operations at three week intervals, then two, then one until we almost ran out of syringes. Two weeks after round three, Honey had shed 22 pounds and Apples had gained an incredible 15, a net differential of 37 amazing pounds.

At first, a television crew in the operating room made me nervous, but once I got used to them, their presence felt invigorating.

Most media surgeons, Jorge confided, are either brash beginners of limited experience or crowing has-beens with far too much, both groups eager to use their limited skills to develop fresh streams of revenue. Trickery was common. A fancy hairdo, professional makeup, and veneered teeth (and even the occasional use of advanced video editing software) could make a mediocre face lift look like a million dollars.

In my case, Jorge explained, the public would be treated to something altogether different—a rare opportunity to watch a master restorative surgeon with no underlying agenda but to rescue two girls while simultaneously advancing the art of medicine.

When my mentor turned consultant finally presented me with his first bill, I almost had a heart attack.

To accelerate Apples' progress, I resorted (off camera) to the judicious placement of synthetic implants into the cheek, chin, jaw, calf, buttocks, and, of course, breasts, a tactic I discussed with neither patient nor media since I did not wish to confuse the lay public about the merits of manipulating fat. I was careful to inject fat around each of the implants both to soften any telltale edges as well as allow me to answer truthfully should someone later question the augmentation of a particular area.

To characterize our progress as deeply gratifying to me as a surgeon is an understatement. Once the elastic wraps came off and Apples first viewed the return of her femininity, she broke down in sobs of joy.

Despite the old adage that all publicity is good publicity, Jorge cautioned me that a single bad outcome could devastate the hard-earned reputation of even the most careful doctor. But then, he added when I frowned, true experts rarely experienced such surprises.

And if, by chance, they did, it was almost always the fault of the patient

The weight doctors back in the USA could not understand our successes, and the twins were careful whenever visiting their parents to avoid all the blood testing and X-rays of years past. Internists, I warned them, understood nothing about such surgery and uninvited intervention would likely interfere with progress.

Full restoration took just over a year, during which I performed twenty-six operations (thirteen on each) both to help the girls make their U-turn as well as boost the public image of Tican plastic surgery. Despite Apples' continued loss of appetite, she maintained her new higher weight. Honey took a liking to our local desserts and downed serving after serving of caramel custard, corn starch pudding, candies made from raw sugar, and cono capuchino—ice cream topped with chocolate— yet never added mass. The girls remained twenty pounds apart, but it was a meager twenty pounds and holding, an astonishing equilibrium and a far cry from the 130 pound differential that had existed prior to their trip to Central America.

After they departed, I missed the girls more than I could have guessed. I remember when they said goodbye, the way Honey hugged me and Apples kissed me on the cheek, the way rather than feeling special I'd experienced a brief twinge of guilt. I was the one who felt most exhausted at project's end.

My wife coaxed me into a two week vacation in Jorge's Rio condo while the big man went to work on creating "spin."

One diet doctor in the States called their outcome a thermodynamic impossibility, a breach of the laws of physics. Another (on Jorge's payroll?) dubbed it a surgical miracle.

I was glad the hard work was over and could only hope my investment was about to begin paying off.

(conclusion on page three)