Page 26 - Waterfall City August Issue 2023

Waterfall City News

PECTUS EXCAVATUM

AND PREGNANCY

I t was only at the age of 31, while Dr Ivan Schewitz with

pregnant with her first baby, that
Ingrid Dammann’s ever-present
Ingrid Dammann.
condition – a sunken chest with
a deeply dented breastbone – was
finally identified as a serious concern
requiring medical intervention.

Until then, what she calls “my constant
elusive companion since birth” was
regarded by medical professionals as
little more than a cosmetic problem – at
worst, a supraventricular arrhythmia or
irregular heart rate, a small hiatal hernia
or, simply, acid reflux.

Six years and two pregnancies later,
Ingrid recalls that even though
pectus excavatum (PE), as it was later
diagnosed, is the most common chest
wall skeletal deformity, it was never
something that any medical practitioner
had previously paid much attention to
or even referred to by name.

“The phrase, ‘There’s nothing wrong
with you’, uttered during many a
medical investigation, would to me
become the most unnerving and
frustrating verdict,” says Ingrid. “It was,
in retrospect, the loneliest road I’ve ever
walked.”

Ingrid lives in Glencoe, near Dundee in having to pull over due to dizziness “For the first time, the specialists I
KwaZulu-Natal, with her husband and and breathlessness,” she recalls. “I am consulted took my complaints seriously,
three young children. She spent the an occupational therapist, and the but they still could not find clear
last month of her first pregnancy on active therapy sessions that I had answers to my problem.
bed rest before her baby was born by with physically and mentally impaired
Caesarean section at 36 weeks. children caused the muscles in my “After I recovered from the Caesarean
upper and lower extremities to become section, the symptoms I experienced
“Prior to being confined to my bed, I completely stiff, leaving me gasping for during pregnancy did not disappear,
could not drive myself to work without air while fighting light-headedness. and my health did not return to what by

24 Waterfall City Issue 8 2023