Doctors in central India removed the skeleton of a baby conceived nearly forty years ago from the body of an Indian woman, confirming what they believe to be the longest ectopic pregnancy ever recorded. Now 62 years old, Jyoti Kumar of Madhya Pradesh sought medical attention after experiencing excruciating stomach pain and a sonogram revealed the presence of a lump. Worried that the patient had a tumor, doctors performed an MRI which, shockingly, revealed that the mass was actually a child's skeleton. You'll never believe how this woman carried the stillborn baby for so long!
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The patient confirmed that she'd become pregnant at the age of 24, but that doctors had warned that the child's chances of survival were slim given that it appeared to be growing outside the uterus.
Apparently, Kumar was aware that she'd need an operation and, terrified at the prospect, she fled to her village. She apparently figured that the baby had died but didn't realize the stillborn baby was lingering inside her body. Kumar sought treatment for her abdominal pain and, when the aches subsided a few months later, she assumed the ordeal was behind her.
But 38 years later, Kumar again began to experience pain in her abdominal region, as well as urinary problems and a constant fever–this time for two consecutive months. Wondering what was causing her discomfort, she visited a hospital in the Indian City of Nagpur. It was there that doctors discovered the remains of her stillborn baby during the medical imaging process, inside a mass that was wedged between her uterus, intestines, and bladder.
During surgery, doctors found that the lump contained a matured skeleton inside a calcified sac, which they speculated was formed by amniotic fluid and soft tissue that liquefied and later hardened to create the problematic mass.
I can't even imagine how traumatic it must have been for a 62-year-old woman to discover that she'd been living for nearly four decades with her stillborn baby inside her. How do doctors tell an older woman that there's a baby's skeleton in her body? Just reading about this makes me feel like going to therapy!
At the same time, though, I have to wonder how Kumar sought that ignoring her ectopic pregnancy diagnosis was a plausible solutio–especially if there were never any visible signs that she'd experienced a miscarriage. I hope at the very least that this story helps to raise awareness about ectopic pregnancies and the many tragic and unsettling outcomes that can result from not seeking medical treatment to cope with this very difficult situation.
Image via J.K. Califf/Flickr
