When a lady went to the clinic after coughing for two months, the doctor was surprised to find her heart was on the wrong side of her chest.
Claire Mack, 19, of Chicago, Illinois, cut herself on some barbed wire in June and had to go to the hospital for a tetanus injection. She thought she’d question physicians about her chronic cough.
She eventually had a chest X-ray, which showed some unexpected findings.
The teen was diagnosed with a lung infection. Doctors discovered something odd about her heart, though.
“OK, this is a little strange, but did you know your heart is on the right side of your chest instead of the left?” the doctor said.
“I was so taken aback that I burst out laughing because I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
“The doctor told me it’s called dextrocardia and that I should tell my primary care physician about it.”
“I kept asking, ‘Are you serious?'” — I was stunned and perplexed as to how I had not realized until I was 19 years old.”
Dextrocardia is an uncommon disease in which the heart is positioned on the right side of the chest instead of the left. It is present at birth.
The disease affects less than 1% of the population, and Claire claimed her parents were similarly “shocked and perplexed.”
“It frightened my dad out, and my mother thought it was amusing that I didn’t find out until now,” she explained.
“Because I had never had a chest X-ray, I had no way of knowing if my heart was reversed.
“My primary care physician examined me and noted that my heart beats louder on the right side – but there’s no way to diagnose dextrocardia just on the basis of that.”
Claire took to TikTok after receiving her diagnosis to tell her story, and her video has since gotten over 2.9 million views and 400,000 likes.
Many people on social media questioned how physicians could have overlooked the fact that her heart was on the wrong side of her chest.
Claire will continue to live with her heart on the incorrect side since dextrocardia is typically not life-threatening. She will not require any medical follow-ups at this time.
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