A look at her would make anyone congratulate her instantly, followed by the predictable question: “When is the baby due?”
Keely Favell, however, was not pregnant.
The reason behind her oversized belly wasn’t an eight or nine-month-old foetus, but an ovarian cyst weighing 26kg.
Narrating her experience in a blogpost, she said,
People had seen me waddling around, carrying this lump, and I’d been asked a few times when I was due. It was so embarrassing trying to explain I was – or so I thought – just fat. I’d go along with it to spare everyone’s blushes. I remember trying to shop for clothes in December 2016 and nothing would fit. I was skin and bone on top, then this massive lump and normal legs. The only thing that was going to fit was maternity wear.
Favell recollected that she had started gaining weight in 2014, but only visited the doctor when she blacked out at work two years later. Confused about the exponential increase in her bump size, she made many visits to the doctor, who was convinced she was pregnant. The repeatedly negative blood tests, however, indicated that the explanation was not this simple.
Daily Mirror reported that it was only after she went for an ultrasound scan, followed immediately by a CT scan, that it was revealed that she had an ovarian cyst in her body that weighed as much as around seven new-born babies.
I’ll never forget the look of shock on his face when the consultant examined me. He said I had a large ovarian mass and the only option was surgery. He couldn’t say what it was exactly, or how big. He warned me there might be more than one and they could be attached to other organs.Keely Favell
Even though she was petrified, Favell agreed to the surgery and lost at least a third of her body weight after the removal of the cyst.
She now has a 30 cm scar from her sternum to her pelvis and has lost her right ovary in the surgery, though the doctors believe it would not affect her chances of getting pregnant in the future.
“I was sore but walking around felt amazing!”
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