Calle Hack was just 15 when the pain began.
Every month was the same: cramps so severe that she vomited, fainted, and couldn’t stay on her feet. She went from doctor to doctor, and they all told her the same thing: that it was normal, that she was exaggerating, that it might be stress. Her own mother explained that menstrual pain ran in the family, so Calle learned to doubt her own body for 17 years.
Everything changed in November 2017, when an internal ultrasound found an orange-sized ovarian teratoma in her right ovary.
The doctor carefully explained what she had inside: bones, cartilage, hair, fat cells, and teeth. Tissue that forms before birth and, in her case, never dissolved. Calle gave it a name of her own: her little monster.
In January 2018, she underwent surgery. They removed the cyst, saved her ovary and, with it, the possibility of becoming a mother someday. The pain that had accompanied her for half her life disappeared with the surgery.
