In very rare cases, a patient walks in for a specific medical problem and comes out with an entirely different diagnosis. Such a thing happened to a 91-year-old woman who's been carrying a stone baby for more than 55 years.
A native of La Boca in Navidad, Chile, 91-year-old Estela Melendez is a picture of good health despite her old age and signs of arthritis. Nevertheless, she remains vulnerable to certain health issues that when she suffered a fall, it warranted a visit to the doctor who took an X-ray.
Although the main concern was a possible fracture, the doctor's attention was onto something else. There's a tumor, the doctors first concluded, and thus she had to be operated immediately. However, during the second round of imaging test, they were completely surprised that it wasn't a tumor after all but a calcified fetus.
This phenomenon is referred to as lithopedion. A very rare occurrence, it develops when the fetus grows in the abdomen rather than in the uterus. When this happens, the fetus can die. However, rather than be reabsorbed by the body or expelled through miscarriage, it becomes calcified as a body's natural way of preventing any infection that may now arise because of the dead fetus.
So far, there are less than 400 reported cases all around the world, and it may happen in just 1 out of 11,000 pregnant women. And because it usually doesn't pose any harm on the woman, it may remain undiagnosed for a lot of years.
Estela, who was married to Manuel Gonzalez for over 70 years before he died, couldn't believe the news, especially since it caused the couple heartbreak to have never had a child. She never knew she was pregnant, and because of the calcified fetus, she was not able to conceive again.
Other than a belly's lump, which is sometimes painful, she's okay, which has somehow convinced the doctors it's better not to remove it.
