AMAZING STORIES AROUND THE WORLD: Woman Who Doctors Thought Was Pregnant Had 26kg Cyst The Weight Of Seven Newborns

Wednesday 28 November 2018

Woman Who Doctors Thought Was Pregnant Had 26kg Cyst The Weight Of Seven Newborns

When Keely Favell’s swollen tum drew questions about baby due dates, she spared everyone embarrassment by playing along.

Pregnancy tests had shown she was not expecting and she thought she was just piling on weight.

Baffled about why her bump kept on growing, she made repeated visits to her doctor.

But after more pregnancy tests came back negative her GP, still convinced a baby was the only explanation, referred her for an ultrasound scan.

And it was then that her enormous bump was revealed to be an ovarian cyst weighing more than four stone – the same weight as seven newborn babies.

Keely, 28, had a five-hour op to remove the growth – which she nicknamed Mr Whippy – and shed a third of her body weight.

She says: “I lost sight of how difficult even simple things like driving a car or walking up the stairs had become.

"Losing my lump gave me my life back.”

Keely noticed she was gaining weight around 2014 but thought nothing of it.

“I’ve always been chunky but over a couple of years I gradually got this tummy” she says.

“I couldn’t understand it. I was exercising and eating healthily but I was slowly getting bigger. It crept up so slowly I didn’t know anything was wrong – I thought I was putting on timber.”

Keely, who has been with partner Jamie Gibbins for 10 years, though she could be expecting. “We did wonder a few times if I was pregnant” she says, “but we did at least three home tests and they ruled it out.”

Assuming it was simple weight gain – which had made her balloon from a size 14 to a 22, weighing in at 23 stone – Keely carried on as normal.

Then, in the summer of 2016, she blacked out at her office admin job and decided to see her GP. “It was a tough period in work and when I passed out my GP put it down to stress,” she says.

“My blood tests came back clear and when I fainted again, I was told it was probably a side effect of acne tablets I’d been prescribed. But I’d stopped taking them six months previously.

She returned to her GP that month to discuss her blood test results – again negative for pregnancy. Still convinced Keely was expecting, her GP referred her for an ultrasound scan. There, Keely was presented with an ominous black screen.

“By the time I had the appointment it was January last year” she says. “I had Jamie beside me as the radiologist moved the probe over my tummy. I saw her eyes widen in horror but the screen was blank. The look on her face said it all. When she said she had to get a consultant I started to panic. Jamie did his best to reassure me but I felt paralysed with fear.”

The consultant sent Keely for an emergency CT scan – which revealed a cyst surrounded by fluid. “He told me I wasn’t fat all, I was quite thin. But I had a 25cm-thick sac of fluid in my belly.”

r.”