Woman lives to 99 with her organs in the wrong place
A woman with a medical condition affecting one in 50 million people worldwide miraculously defied all odds and lived to the age of 99.
The incredible feat was uncovered in a class last year where university students were inspecting cadavers as part of their studies in Oregon Health and Science University in Portland.
Rose Marie Bentley was discovered to have lived nearly a century before dying of natural causes, despite her internal organs being positioned in the wrong places, according to an article by the university.
Her “unicorn” condition, called situs inversus with levocardia, meant most of her vital organs “were a mirror image of typical human anatomy, meaning they were transposed right to left”.
On inspection, students found the main vein leading to her heart drained to a completely different side to normal, and veins that typically drained the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were either in a different spot or completely missing.
“Instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on the right,” assistant professor Cameron Walker, who teaches the Foundations of Clinical Anatomy class at Oregon Health and Science University, told the publication.
“Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was predominantly on the 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 fact Rose lived to such an old age was particularly fascinating because people in other known cases of the condition normally suffered heart problems, which caused earlier death.
Aside from chronic heartburn, explainable by her unusual internal anatomy, Rose lived an active and healthy lifestyle, one of her daughters, Ginger, said.
“We had no reason to believe there was anything like that wrong. She was always very healthy. She was always doing something, taking us to Campfire Girls, fishing, swimming. She was an excellent swimmer.”
