Good ol' transposition of the great vessels. If you think that's weird try dextrocardia, which is where the heart sits on your right side and the liver is more towards your left abdomen. Good on the kid for being able to sustain the operation.
That's exactly what I thought of. I have to write an article for submission to a journal before I graduate. I'm torn between the epidemiology of a zombie outbreak and and argument that dextrocardia patients are actually from the Mirror Universe.
The poor kid. I bet he felt like he was hyper anemic and out of breath the whole time. I wish him the best.
You know, the Mirror Universe has scientific merit, but not with those terms. If a person were to traverse the entire length of a four-dimensional Mobius loop, when they returned to normal space, they would perceive everything backwards, and medical science would find their entire bodies flipped left for right.
Glad to know they pulled it off and he's doing well. 1/5 chance wow, that must've been a scary intense moment for the family to sit through. Glad they all can get on with their lives now
Just so everyone's clear, his blood wasn't flowing backward, per se. With this condition, the aorta (main artery to body) and pulmonary arteries (arteries to lungs) are switched with relation to the heart. However, the "congenital correction" is that the connections within the heart (between the atria and ventricles -- upper and lower chambers) are also switched. So, essentially, circulation occurs as it should. However, it's usually associated with other defects, such as a hole between the ventricles -- so it needs to be repaired in most cases. Oooh. Tough choice. That's a double-dose of WIN, right there!
Read a Trek book way back in the day that had Mirror Spock holed up in the medlab, synthesizing mirror images of asymmetric amino acids that he needed to survive.
