A New Zealand woman has spoken out after her ‘baby bump’ turned out to be a 4.9 kilo tumour that was slowly killing her.
Keahnee Tioke, 24, suffered from what she thought was severe period pain for many months, then her tummy started to swell.
‘Diagnosed with coeliac disease, I changed my diet. Next I was given medication for lupus,’ explains Keahnee.
As her belly grew bigger, Keahnee began to worry she was pregnant to her boyfriend Tamaikoha, 22.
‘I took pregnancy tests but they all came back negative,’ she says.
Keahnee became constipated, developed haemorrhoids and was in almost constant pain.
In January, when she started struggling to breathe, Keahnee was given an ultrasound.
That’s when she was told that a cyst had exploded out of her left ovary and grown into her stomach and urgently needed removing.
After two-and-a-half hours of surgery, she woke up to see her stomach was completely flat.
That’s when a doctor showed her a photo of the 4.9 kilo cyst they’d removed.
‘I couldn’t believe what I saw – a giant 30cm-wide cyst,’ says Keahnee. ‘I felt like I’d given birth to an alien.’
They had to remove her left ovary but luckily samples showed that the tumour wasn’t cancerous. If she hadn’t had the tumour removed, it would have pushed on her lungs, eventually killing her.
‘I’m just happy to be alive,’ says Keahnee.
For more real-life stories see issue 21 of that’s life! magazine – out now!
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