Pregnant for 46 years! - SciForums.com

Undecided

Banned (4,731 posts)

06-03-04, 06:39 PM

“

Last year, an elderly woman attended a clinic in Rabat, Morocco. The lady complained she was feeling heaviness in the lower part of her stomach and experienced shortness of breath.
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X-ray indicated that the lady needed immediate surgery. The surgery was conducted the next day. Surgeons made a Caesarian section and extracted a formless calcified lump. As it was later determined, this respected Moroccan woman got pregnant 46 years ago! **************************
With time, the fetus has fossilized after being saturated with calcium produced by female's organism. Most remarkable of all is that this fossilized "cocoon" did not affect the overall mother's condition.
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http://english.pravda.ru/science/19/...pregnancy.html

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Can someone even dare explain this?

Thor

"Pfft, Rebel scum!" (7,330 posts)

06-03-04, 08:58 PM

My guess would be that it died about midway through pregnancy, stayed there and gathered a collection of minerals. So she wasn't pregnant for 46 years, just carrying her dead foetus for 46 years which is kind of morbid.

eddymrsci

Beware of the dark side (585 posts)

06-04-04, 09:54 PM

wow this is incredible... so many strange things can happen in nature

Thor's hypothesis sound reasonable, but wouldn't the fetus decompose when it died?

Iris

Registered Senior User (107 posts)

06-05-04, 01:29 AM

While rare, it is not unknown.

WARNING: Gross and icky pictures, not work safe.

http://www.obgyn.net/ENGLISH/PUBS/AR...Stone_Baby.htm

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Stone baby
by Dr. Andrew Folley

History

The patient is a 37-year-old Zairian female who lives in a village of Malongo at the headwaters of the Congo River. She presented with a relatively asymptomatic large abdominal mass. Examination revealed a distended abdomen with a very irregularly contoured mass present consistent with a large fibroid uterus 28-32 weeks size. The patient was having fairly regular periods. She has had eight previous pregnancies with five living children. Recommendation made for exploratory laparotomy through a midline incision with a working diagnosis of uterine leiomyomata.

Exploration through the midline incision revealed no free fluid present in the abdomen. The uterus and ovaries felt fairly normal to palpation. A large calcified spherical mass was delivered through the incision, enveloped with omental adhesions. At this point diagnosis was thought be possibly some type of splenic or mesenteric tumor. The diagnosis was finally made when a shoulder was delivered along with this mass. Finally, after the adhesions were removed, a four pound calcified fetus was removed. This appeared to be approximately a 32-week intra-abdominal pregnancy which had died and calcified.

In further questioning the patient, she stated that she had been pregnant about three years ago and everything seemed to be going fine, but "the baby never came out."

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http://path.upmc.edu/cases/case128/dx.html

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The appearance of a calcified fetus or lithopedion may be evident if maturation is advanced. This can occur if there is retention of the fetus for many months beyond the average gestation. It is important to remember that a lithopedion does not need to be a twin. In one reported case, a 94-year-old woman was found to have a lithopedion, probably present for approximately 61 years.

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http://www.taiwanheadlines.gov.tw/20...0000106s5.html

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Cancer surgery reveals 49-year-old 'fossil' fetus

Published: January 6, 2000
Source: Taiwan News

A 76-year-old woman was found to have carried a 20-gram (0.7 ounce) and 12-centimeter-long lithopaedion for 49 years.

Doctors at the Veterans General Hospital in Taipei have recently discovered a "fossilized" fetus in the Abdomen of a 76-year-old woman, suffering from cervical cancer while operating to remove her womb.

According to a an examination report, the fetus was conceived 49 years ago, making it only the fourth such recorded phenomenon, said Yu Chien-jen, chief of the hospital's gynecology department.

Yu said doctors on Dec. 31 found a 20-gram (0.7 ounce) and 12-centimeter-long lithopaedion, the rocklike remains of a fetus hardened by calcium buildup, in the abdominal cavity of the woman surnamed Wu.

< snip >

The hospital said their research yielded only three known lithopaedions, and the earliest case dated back to 1582, when a 28-year old fetus was found in French woman.

The other two cases were reported in the United States. In 1995, the Lancet medical journal reported that a 92-year-old woman had a lithopaedion inside her body. In 1999, the Madigan Military Hospital in Washington D.C. said a 67-year-old woman had been found to have carried a calcified fetus for 39 years

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Thor

"Pfft, Rebel scum!" (7,330 posts)

06-05-04, 09:42 AM

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Originally Posted by eddymrsci
Thor's hypothesis sound reasonable, but wouldn't the fetus decompose when it died?

”

Not if it was preserved inside the woman's womb. Also, the articles states that the unborn baby is fossilized. So there we go, an explanation

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