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| Is your heart in the right place?
It's something to think about. Next time you are watching a parade go by, and the American Flag passes through, just be weary of those around you. Watch them very closely to see what happens when they put their hands over their hearts in respect for the flag. Which hand do they use? Where do they put it? One July fourth, my family and I watched as the local parade went down Church street. When a group of Veterans came walking with the American Flag, we noticed that some people didn’t stand, but some people put their hands over their hearts, and some people even saluted. We began a discussion about how apathetic things were getting since, when we were kids, over forty years ago, virtually everyone paid respect for the flag as it passed in a parade, by putting their hands over their hearts. I later did some investigating to find out what’s the right way to pay respect for the flag and I found that ordinary persons should put their hand over their heart, just as we had seen some people do during the parade. In my searching I also came upon some other more unusual facts. Yes, I’ve recently found out that there is a rare medical condition called Situs Inversus. Only about one in eight thousand people have this condition, which means - having all internal organs transposed, on the opposite side. For clarity, in my ordinary layman's terms, I'll simply call it Reverse-a-mosis. With this, the internal organs in a person's body are in what is called a "mirror image" position. Ordinarily, a person's spleen is on the left side. With Reversamosis, it's on the right. Most people have their heart on the left. Reversamosis - the heart on the right. When most people get their appendix taken out, they have an operation on the right side. Reversamosis – the appendix is on the left. My gall bladder would be on the right, and so would my liver. Reverseamosis - liver on the left. You get the idea. There is nothing about Reversamosis that causes any problems and the person lives a normal life and is "normal" in every way. However, the drawbacks of Reversamosis begin when the person gets into the regular medical system. For example, when a person with Reversamosis gets a chest x-ray, as one might imagine, there might be confusion. The first thing the x-ray technician would think is that there is something wrong with the x-ray machine, as it keeps giving reversed images. In the first few days of life, when a baby with reversamosis has his heartbeat checked, the pulse is not found on the left, but is heard over on the right side. This makes a lot of cause for concern because there are many other dangerous conditions that can arise when only the persons HEART is on the "wrong"side. But, if the person has Reversamosis and ALL of the organs are on the other side, it is no problem. Some stupid mistakes could be made if a person with Reversamosis was having surgery. If you had Reversamosis and needed to have your right kidney taken out, for example, well, when they opened you up, your spleen would be in the way. And, if they didn't know that you had Reversamosis, then they might take your spleen out, instead of your right kidney, or worse yet, they might inadvertently cut or puncture your spleen on the way, while reaching for your kidney and you might bleed to death because of it. Simply because it was not known that you had Reveramosis and your spleen was on the right instead of on the left. The same thing would exist if the gall bladder needed to be removed. If they didn't know you had Reversamosis, they would cut you open on the right side, looking for your gall bladder, and they would find your stomach instead. Of course, with MIR and CAT scans and even using modern x-rays, there is not a big chance that medical people now-a-days would fail to find Reversamosis right away and they would naturally avoid any mistakes. Many people have lived all their lives never knowing that they indeed had Reversamosis. And, unless they had x-rays or an operation to reveal what their insides looked like, they would not know that they had it, in as much as, they would suffer no ill effects to point to the fact that they had Reversamosis. Previously undiagnosed Reversamosis may therefore, be seen at an autopsy. Perhaps the person doing an autopsy on the dead body with Reversamosis would open them up and say, "Hey, look, he has all his organs on the opposite side! Take a picture of that!" Who knew… A benefit of having reversamosis would be like this: Let's say that you had Reversamosis and you were working nights as a clerk at the Seven Eleven store. And, a gunman came in to rob the store. Well, as he aimed the weapon at your left chest, you would have an excellent chance of not being shot in the heart. In this case, having Reversamosis, you would get shot just the same, but, you would be able to say, " Ha ha, you missed my heart, and only shot me in the left lung. Didn't know I had Reversamosis, did ya?" Reversamosis could save your life. No, Reversamosis is not a well known, common condition. I don't recall ever hearing anything about some famous person, who did some fantastic feat of heroism, and was then, by the way, said to have had Reversamosis. Nope, don't know any famous people with Reversamosis, sorry. So, who are these people who have Reversamosis? Are they Klingons? Vulcans? Alien mutants? And, who's to say what exactly "normal" is for the insides of a human? I began thinking about all this when I found out about Reversamosis. Maybe to call someone with Reversamosis "wrong sided" would be like calling a left handed person abnormal. I don't know, but while worrying about whether someone with their heart on the right side has it on the wrong side; or whether having your heart on the left side is the right side, I found myself deciding that, as long as your heart is on the inside, you are normal. Yet, to my chagrin, I have been informed by friends that there is a birth defect "Ectopia Cordis " in which a person is born with their heart on the outside of their body. They can be operated on and may recover to live a "normal" life. Those with Reversamosis do not need to recover in any way, they just keep on living normally too. The only thing is the tell-tail evidence, when a parade comes along and the flag goes by, sometimes you see these people put their left hand over their right chest to cover their heart. |