A mother of two was forced to expel a cancerous mass after she thought she was pregnant.
Lauren Knowles from Aberdeen, Scotland, told the Daily Mail that she was shocked to discover that when she was seven-weeks “pregnant,” it was actually the mass–not a baby.
Doctors then informed her that it was a molar pregnancy, which is a cluster of cells called gestational trophoblastic disease. She had the cancerous mass removed and underwent chemotherapy, causing her blonde hair to fall out. The tumor then began to grow at an alarming rate, according to the paper.
Knowles said the tumor was the size of a pear, and it was eventually removed, and she was cancer-free.
Doctors also claimed that she would have difficulty in getting pregnant in the future, but she was able to give birth to a child, Indi, nearly two years later.
“The tumor grew in my womb the same way a baby would, the same hormones were produced and my pregnancy tests always came back positive,” she told the Daily Mail from Perth, Australia – where she now lives. “There was no way that I thought it was cancer but after I started bleeding, I had further tests when I was seven weeks pregnant.”
“The mass was the same size as a baby at 17 weeks so it was a big tumor to push out with no assistance,” she added to The Independent.
When the mass was discovered via a scan, she started chemotherapy “right away.”
“’I lost all my hair and three months after starting treatment, I gave birth to the mass in the hospital toilets,” she told the Mail.
She added: “I was so relieved when I saw the tumor down the toilet as I knew my ordeal was finally over. And after all my treatment, the light at the end of the tunnel was falling pregnant with Indi one year later.”
According to the Mayo Clinic, a molar pregnancy is when a tumor develops in the uterus–starting when an egg is fertilized. Instead of a normal pregnancy, it causes the placenta to develop into an “abnormal mass of cysts,” Mayo’s website states.
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