Newsroom

Haydon and Payton Miller have been together as long as they can remember, which you would expect for identical twins.

They went to the same school system in the tiny town of Dimmitt, Texas. They went to Texas Tech for their undergraduate degrees and even were in the same Master of Science in Medical Science program at UNT Health Fort Worth.

But in July, it looked as if the band was breaking up and the twins were going their separate ways to medical school.

Payton was accepted into UNT Health’s Texas College of Osteopathic Medicine and had arrived in Fort Worth for orientation in early July. His twin brother, Haydon, was packing up for Tennessee.

“I was headed out the door when the email arrived,” Haydon said.

It was the email that reunited the twins. Haydon had an offer from TCOM, the last offer for the Class of 2029. These identical twins will remain together for the final push to become first-generation physicians. They are now medical students who might be identical but don’t necessarily act the same.

“We are pretty close even though we fight a lot,” Payton said with a smile hidden beneath his handlebar mustache.

The facial hair might be the only recognizable difference between these two. The twins were valedictorian and salutatorian at Dimmitt High School, although it depends on who’s telling the story which twin got which honor.

“I was first in the class for the last four years of high school, but in those last two weeks of school, Payton overtook me,” Haydon said. “It was on a technicality, and I didn’t want to fight it.”

Payton simply smiled as his brother recalled the story. Instead of fighting the technicality, the brothers gave a co-graduation speech. The pair has always had one more thing in common: Payton and Haydon have always wanted to do medicine.

“It’s always been medicine for both of us from the beginning,” Payton said.

Their mom was an X-ray technician, and they were both exposed to medicine at an early age. The brothers were able to take an Emergency Medicine Technician class during their senior year of high school and worked in a Lubbock hospital, which exposed them to a wide array of departments. The pair went to Lubbock for undergraduate studies at Texas Tech and graduated in 2022 with degrees in animal sciences.

They both worked in different areas at University Medical Center in Lubbock throughout their undergraduate courses and continued to work during their gap year before starting the master’s in medical science program at UNT Heath. They both graduated from the program in 2024 and applied to medical school.

After graduate school, they were working as paramedics while trying to plan their next steps for medical school. It wasn’t long before the two hospitals in Lubbock started seeing double.

“My truck (ambulance) would bring in a patient, and then five minutes later, Payton’s would do the same,” Haydon said. “They thought we were the same person, bringing in new patients to the ER and the hardest-working paramedic they had ever seen.”

“They didn’t understand how we were bringing in so many patients, but it was just us being on separate trucks and too many critical calls,” Payton said.

While working in the emergency room, the brothers recalled a patient who was particularly unruly and didn’t want Payton in the room anymore. So in walked Haydon to take his brother’s place to the shock of the patient, who thought he was seeing double.

The emergency room wasn’t the only time people haven’t been able to tell the twins apart. In fifth grade, the pair tried to switch classes one day by wearing the same clothes, but alas, it didn’t work. In a more serious case at Texas Tech, the twins were accused of cheating when they were both in the same class.

“We had a test where we were on the opposite side of the classroom,” Haydon said. “We studied the exact same thing and put down the same answer, but we both got it wrong and were still accused of cheating. When we met with the professor, she eventually understood there was no possibility that we cheated, and she jokingly said, ‘Wow, that twin thing is weird.’”

Getting into medical school is difficult enough for one, but for two and at the same school? The odds were stacked against the brothers, but they were OK with that.

“If we both got into the same medical school, great; if not, we were both ready to go where we needed to,” Haydon said. “It would have been different, but we would have made it work.”

Payton got the news first in early May that he was coming to TCOM. Haydon, however, was waiting and waiting. Payton was in Fort Worth for orientation when his brother received the news on Monday night of the first day of orientation. The last seat in the class was open, and it was for Haydon.

“Our parents, family and friends were so happy when they realized that we weren’t going to be on opposite sides of the country. We’re extremely blessed that God worked things out the way He did,” Payton said.

Now the pair will walk the stage Aug. 27 at Bass Performance Hall to receive their first white coats at UNT Health’s White Coat Ceremony.

The twins agree on their fields of interest and where they want to practice: emergency medicine and West Texas.

“We both see ourselves practicing in emergency medicine or maybe something like trauma surgery,” Payton said.

“We are both leaning toward emergency services physicians, but having worked at the cancer center, I am keeping an open mind,” Haydon said.

The twins from tiny Dimmitt, who ran relay races together in high school, who were moments away from separately running their race into medicine, are now running together in the final leg of their journey into medicine.

• Share
• Tweet