A mother-of- two was horrified to discover that a ‘harmless’ lump on her ovary was in fact, the decades-old remains of her unborn twin.
Jenny Kavanagh (45), from Twickenham in London, made the grim discovery after going to doctors to have a contraceptive coil implanted.
Scans revealed that a 10cm mass was growing in her left ovary, and medics were concerned that it could rupture and kill her at any moment. Surgeons then told her it was an undeveloped unborn twin which had grown inside her from birth – complete with face, an eye, tooth, and long black hair.
Jenny said that she felt extremely lucky that it was detected and dealt with before it did any harm to her. “I try not to think of it too much because I don’t want to feel sad about it.
“If I’m honest, I did feel sad when I first saw it, because of the size and weight of it, it had already been likened to a baby. “But I try not to feel sad about it. I try to remember that it had no heart and no brain,” she said
Jenny and her husband moved to Cyprus in 2005 to escape the ‘rat race’.
She said she has always avoided doctors and has never visited a gynecologist, but had no problems with either of her pregnancies.
But when she started to have heavy periods she worried it might be due to a coil she had fitted 15 years ago and went to get a new one.
The consultant conducted a scan of her abdomen and while her right ovary was totally normal, the one on the left side had a 10cm dark mass, in May this year.
Jenny’s doctor assured her it was unlikely to be a cancerous tumour – and probably a teratoma or cyst – but she said she had ‘thought the worst’.
After tests proved inconclusive, she underwent a three-hour operation to remove the mass at The Mediterranean Hospital of Cyprus.
Doctors agreed to take a photo of the mass on her phone and showed her it when she came around, explaining it was a mass of cells which had been inside her since birth.
Jenny, who has now made a fully recovery added: ‘When I showed the picture to my mum she was really sad – saw it as her unborn child, and my unborn twin.’
Found at Independent