Identical twin girls fighting same cancer battle

Identical twin girls Kenedi and Kendal share many things -- looks, clothes, nap times and sadly, the same cancer diagnosis.

"It's extremely devastating," their father, Aaron Breyfogle, said. "That's the only way I can explain it."

Born prematurely at 33 weeks on May 1, the twins were fighting for their health early on. It took 30 long days in the neonatal intensive care unit before their parents were finally able to take the girls home in Pierre, South Dakota.

About a month later, strange spots started showing up on each of the girls.

"We thought they might be bug bites ... bruises," Breyfogle explained. "But then more showed up."

Breyfogle and his wife, Abby, had an eerie feeling something wasn't right.

Their pediatrician sent them to a dermatologist for a skin and bone marrow biopsy, which both came back malignant.

In August, the twins were diagnosed with rare acute myeloid leukemia (AML), a cancer of the blood and bone marrow.

"Acute myeloid leukemia is generally a disease of older people and is uncommon before the age of 45," according to a 2015 American Cancer Society report. "The average age of a patient with AML is about 67 years."

At just three months old, the girls began chemotherapy at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, with their mom and dad by their side.

Last week, a day before they turned four months old, they finished the first round.

Now weighing around 10 and 12 pounds, the girls are getting ready for the next round of treatment.

Thousands of people are following their journey on Facebook and people have donated nearly $25,000 on the family's GoFundMe page.

"You never think yourself would be in this situation," Breyfogle said. "It helps you get through each day a little better when you have a lot of people behind you."

It will take a few months to determine how effective the treatments have been.

Until then, the family is going to continue visiting the adorable little girls in the hospital and learning new things about them every day.

In certain ways, sure, the twins are very similar, Breyfogle said, but when it comes to personality traits -- they're already quite distinct.

"Kenedi seems to be more relaxed," he explained. "And Kendal, I would say, is the opposite."

But there's one thing he knows they both are: They're fighters.