She was one in fifty million

That's the opinion of a professor who examined the body of Rose Marie Bentley of Portland, Oregon, which she had donated to Oregon Health and Science University. She died at 99 having lived a fairly normal life healthwise. She had four children, had her appendix and gallbladder removed, had a hysterectomy and lived with chronic heartburn.

But when the researchers began examining her body, they found:

Her heart was missing a large vein that's normally on the right side. A typical body has a large vein called the vena cava that follows the right side of the vertebral column, curving under the liver and emptying deoxygenated blood into the heart. Bentley's vein was on the left, and instead of terminating directly into the heart, which is typical, "her vein continued through her diaphragm, along the thoracic vertebrae, up and around and over the aortic arch and then emptied into the right side of her heart."

Numerous veins that typically drain the liver and other parts of the chest cavity were either missing or sprouting from an unusual spot.

Her right lung had only two lobes, instead of the standard three, while the right atrium of her heart was twice normal size.

Instead of having a stomach on the left, which is normal, her stomach was on the right.

Her liver, which normally occurs predominantly on the right, was predominantly on the left.

Her spleen was on the right side instead of its normal occurrence on the left. The rest of her digestive tract, the ascending colon, was inverted as well.

Bentley's condition is called situs inversus with levocardia, in which most vital organs are reversed. It occurs in only 1 out of 22,000 babies and is invariably associated with severe congenital heart disease; 95% of those born this way die by age 5. However, Bentley lived to 99, most likely because she did not have heart defects.