Keeley Favell was 28 years old and living in Swansea, Wales, when her abdomen started growing in 2014.
She thought she was simply gaining weight. But her belly kept swelling until it looked like that of a woman who was nine months pregnant. The tests and blood tests came back negative, although, according to her account, a doctor insisted she was expecting a baby.
In late 2016, she fainted at work. She was having trouble walking and breathing, and was referred for an ultrasound. She said the radiologist’s eyes widened in horror and the screen went blank. An emergency CT scan confirmed the unthinkable: a 26-kilo ovarian cyst, the weight of about seven newborns.
She had surgery at Singleton Hospital in a five-hour operation. The mass was benign and, according to her doctors, she will be able to have children. Favell nicknamed it “Mr Whippy” because it looked like a pile of ice cream, and admitted she couldn’t believe she’d walked around for so long carrying “this alien”.