It started out as persistent, sharp pain in her lower abdomen. Thinking nothing much of it, Louise ignored it until she began bleeding between periods. At that point, her alarmed husband asked her to see a doctor.
She did, but not before taking a pregnancy test—just in case. It was negative. At the clinic, she was advised to take another one. The second came out negative as well. The couple from Kent, England came home that day not knowing what was wrong. But then Louise’s condition got worse.
She took a pregnancy test, just in case...
She began to experience back pain, frequent urination, loss of appetite, difficulty breathing, and bloating. For good measure, she took her third test, and, alas, it was still negative.
Her doctors, convinced that she was pregnant, were baffled. They continued running tests on her, with one doctor saying, “there’s definitely something in there.”
Convinced she wasn’t pregnant and unwilling to suffer through her symptoms, Louise pressed her doctors for answers until they took an ultrasound. The results revealed that there wasn’t a baby inside her but a soccer ball-size tumor that had been covering her ovary.
Louise had a grade two immature teratoma, rare form of ovarian tumor which took up her entire stomach and pressed against her organs.
In a four-hour surgery that required a three-month recovery, doctors removed the 20-centimeter tumor, one of Bryant’s ovaries, and a fallopian tube. A biopsy later revealed that the tumor was confined to only Bryant’s ovary.
Professor Hani Gabra, Director of the Ovarian Cancer Action research center, says, “The symptoms of bloating or a lump in the stomach could absolutely be mistaken for pregnancy but they could also be a tumor, or many other things. So it stands to reason that after one or two pregnancy tests you would then need to be tested for anything else.”
Photo: Cynthia Page/Flickr
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