2584 I am a sweetheart, literally.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Me: “I like my men occasionally childlike, but never childish.”

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Dextrose = sugar, sweet.
Cardia = heart.
Therefore dextrocardia = sweetheart, right?

Wrong.

Dextrocardia is a condition where the heart is on the right rather than the left, or reversed, sometimes mirror image. It sometimes also includes Kartagener’s Syndrome, where the cilia in various parts of the body, like the sinuses, respiratory system, ears, etc., are malformed and don't function correctly. There may also be malformation of the nasal sinuses, hyperemia of nasal mucosa (that means there's a lot of blood vessels there), and a tendency toward mucus accumulation in the lungs and sinuses. There's also a higher likelihood of asthma and frequent bronchitis in childhood, and congestive heart failure in maturity.

I discovered this by accident today. Know how you look something up on the internet, and it mentions something else so you look that up too, and pretty soon you're several streets over from where you started? That's how I ended up at dextrocardia.

Dextrocardia itself often has no symptoms, and often causes no problems - except that leads must be reversed for valid ECG results, and defibrillator paddles must be reversed for them to work. So it's important to know if you've got it. Maybe even medical bracelet important, since if you need a defibrillator you're not likely to be able to mention it to the emergency workers.

The Kartagener's, depending on its severity, causes all kinds of things like a heavy cough, rattling sounds in the lungs, deafness, sterility, sinus infections and difficulty draining, and other icky things.

Now, get this: My mother had asthma (or something diagnosed as asthma) as a child in the late 1920s, and died of congestive heart failure at 67ish. She had been told when she was young she had a congenital heart problem, but the details were fuzzy (as were all medical matters with my mother). In her late forties she started having hearing problems. She'd always had a heavy steady cough. She smoked, but not enough to account alone for a cough that frequent and heavy.

Add this: When I was 11 or 12 years old, I went though a battery of tests at the Ottawa Medical Center to figure out why I had a constant heavy cough, "loud" lungs, and serious bronchitis so often that it was almost constant. That was about 1956, so no CAT or MRI, just X-rays. The doctors told my mother that my heart was "reversed", that I had lungs 150% the size they should have been and the lower 1/4 of them were filled with fluid causing the bubbling sounds which didn't clear simply because I didn't breathe deeply enough because they were so large, and that my nasal sinuses produced a lot of mucus, and excessive post nasal drip was what caused the coughing.

Mom said the coughing was driving her crazy, could the sinuses be drained? So they referred me to another doctor, who explained to my mother that draining them involved a huge needle through the bones of my face, and it was very nasty and painful and would leave scars, and he didn't feel that it would help because the sinuses would just fill up again. Right in front of me, Mom said she didn't care, to just do it, because the coughing was driving her crazy. Luckily, he refused.

Throughout my youth I had frequent nose bleeds. I always assumed it was because I was beaten so often, and I have fragile capillaries**, and it just never healed. By the time I was 15 I had a hole clear through the septum. (The hole is huge now. I'm waiting for my nose to collapse.)

Since my early 20s I've noticed my right ear doesn't work as well as the left. I always assumed it was from shooting at the base rifle range in my teens without protection (I shot an "elephant gun" once, had to lie on my stomach to do it and the recoil kicked me back three feet, and I couldn't hear from that ear at all for a week, but the airmen thought it was a riot).

Until my mid-thirties I coughed every time I drew a deep breath. It disappeared during psychotherapy, and I assumed that it had become a defense mechanism - if I coughed I didn't have to answer questions, and after I found me I didn't need it any more. I still cough sometimes when my sinuses act up, and for a very long time after a cold.

My sinuses still give me some problems, I still have excessive post-nasal drip, and they do seem to be getting gradually worse, like this summer from all the dampness and mold, but I assumed that it was because of some bad sinus infections I'd had in the early 80s, that probably had scarred the drains.

So, now I wonder. Do I have Dextrocardia with mild Kartagener’s Syndrome? Or do I have a bad case of internetitis?

I've had maybe two chest x-rays in the past 50 years, the most recent in perhaps 2002, and nobody has said anything about a reversed heart, or even that it's on the wrong side, but is that something they would happen to notice if they weren't looking for it?

It's not like there's anything I'd want or need to DO about it, but given the ECG/defibrillator cautions, I probably should know. If I asked, would my doctor be annoyed and diagnose internetitis?

'Tis a puzzlement.

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**In the 1960s we siblings were diagnosed with a form of hemophilia that affects both sexes, but we were never told which of the several clotting factors was missing. (One brother and one sister has it more severely than the other three, but still not incapacitating.) I suspect that it's not hemophilia at all, but fragile capillaries.
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