Friday, December 29, 2006

Situs Inversus

I learned something new yesterday. So it turns out there is a rare congenital condition called "situs inversus" in which your heart and other internal organs are reversed -- a mirror image of the ordinary body. I had never heard of it, and frankly, it's kind of mind-bending.

Here's the kicker -- a person with this condition usually functions normally! It's kind of crazy. So basically, the portions of the body that are not normally mirrored about the body's center are all transposed, but the body goes about its business anyway. It doesn't know any different. I wonder, would a right-handed person with situs inversus actually originally be left-handed?

The reason I discovered this condition is because it turns out that Minnesota Timberwolves rookie, Randy Foye, has the condition. How unbelievable is the human body that in an instance when everything internally is backwards from the way it's supposed to be, an individual can still perform at the highest level possible athletically?

1 comment:

Chairman said...

Does this mean that Randy Foye is ass-backwards?