Heterotaxy Syndrome...

...I learned THAT’S what the mess on my insides is called. You see, went for Coronary Arterial Calcium Scan and got my score (which, by the bye, after 20 years of low carb and high fat eating is EXCELLENT!), but the scan showed up the other little mysteries of my insides. I remember mom telling me when I was a teen: “Your insides are reversed, so if you get a pain that you think CAN’T be appendicitis because it’s on the wrong side, well, it could be.” Well, okay. I have a long, ugly, nasty scar down my stomach. (I think I mentioned before my nephew called it “franken-stomach”). I knew that was from a surgery I had as a day’s old baby to fix an intestinal blockage. I never put the whole thing together. The blockage (caused by a twist in the intestine) is common in heterotaxy syndrome. As is the fact that my spleen has company (several splenules, little spleens accompanying the spleen!), the fact that my stomach is on the right, my heart is correctly placed, but hooks up in some weird ways to the rest of the bod, AND I think the old liver just lies right across the tummy. There’s signs of some long-healed granulomatous disease (whatever that means), but I take it that’s a genetic issue too. Put it all together and this accounts for why I gave up on my dream of a nice six pack some years ago. There’s nothing nice about THIS stomach and never will be, no matter how “fit” I get. With having heterotaxy with a heart on the left, you can have all kinds of dangerous heart complications, so I praise God that I did NOT have those, other than sporting my weird hookups for the blood plumbing. I had no idea that it was actually a genetic disease, but it was kind of neat to look it up and realize: “yup, yup, nope, yup.” More information than you ever wanted, I know. But I found being able to put a name to the phenomenon rather nice after all these years.