There are strange things that happen in the medical world. Some are rare occurrences and medical mysteries.
On a spring day i 2018, a cadaver was assigned to a group of medical students of Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
The cadaver was a 99 year old woman who had died of natural causes. Her name, Rose Marie Bentley. To honor and respect the privacy of those who offer their bodies to science, no future details given to the students.
But soon the students and their professor found out how this woman had lived such a special life. A condition called Situs Inversus with Levocardia, a condition which made most of the vital organs are reversed; almost like a mirror inside the body.
Numerous veins that typically drain the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were either missing or sprouting from an unusual spot. Her right lung had only two lobes, instead of the standard three, while the right atrium of the heart was twice the normal size.
Instead of having her stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on the right” Walker the professor leading the students added “her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was on her left. Her spleen was on the right side instead of its normal occurrence on the left. and then the rest of her digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well.”
The mutations in Situs Inversus with Levocadia occur early, Walker explained, possibly between 30 and 45 days into pregnancy. No one knows why.
The condition occurs in 1 out of 22,000 babies and is invariably associated with severe congenital heart disease. But Bently was an anomaly, one of the few born with the condition that didn’t have heart defects, walker said.
He said this was the one factor that contributed most to her long life. Bently never showed any negative effects from her flip-flop innards.
The only clue anything might have been unusual came when Bentley’s appendix was removed. The surgeon made a note that her appendix wasn’t in the right spot when they took it out, but never said anything to us. Nobody said anything to the family when they took her gallbladder out and did a hysterectomy.
She wanted to be donated to science just like her late husband.