'Congenitally Corrected Transposition of the Great Arteries' ... I'm sorry, what?

The title of this blog post portrays the exact response I gave to my Congenital Heart Nurse back in February of this year when she informed me of what the correct medical name for my heart defect was. At first I was like dayuuum that is a pretty sweet ass name for whatever the heck was wrong with my heart but then I began to wonder...I wondered that because the name of my defect was rather long, did it mean that there was something really wrong with my heart? 


For years when people asked what was wrong with my heart, I told them "the bottom of my heart is twisted and that is why I have a pacemaker" (getting a pacemaker is a whole other story - one to come though, of course as my blog blossoms). The people asking this question always put the focus on the 'pacemaker' part, never the part where I said my heart was TWISTED. Surely, that is more interesting than the pacemaker. However, I grew to understand that without one, you can't have the other - with my defect anyway.


It's important to realise that for me growing up I wasn't very aware of what exactly was wrong with my heart. To make it easy for me my parents told me that if I had to explain to anyone what was wrong with me I just have to say the one sentence, which is now embedded in my head for the next eternity "The bottom of my heart is twisted." Now that I am a (sort of) responsible adult I have decided to properly research what my heart defect is and what it means for me to have to deal with it for the rest of my life. So if you are reading this and haven't got a clue what is going on, I am kinda in the same boat as you, so be kind!:) 


So in order to properly begin this journey on how I have been keeping up with the pace, it's important that we understand what exactly CCTGA is by knowing first how a normal heart works. According to the American Adult Congenital Heart Association: