A mother reveals she had a giant 20lb ovarian cyst, that made her look pregnant, was removed

A mom revealed she had a giant 20-pound ovarian cyst removed that made her look pregnant before it crushed her lungs and “suffocated her from the inside out.”

Kenya Smith, from Utah, said she started having trouble going to the bathroom, could no longer sleep on her stomach and had discomfort after eating last May, so she visited a doctor.

She claims that the doctors were left scratching their heads as her stomach continued to swell and her The belly eventually became so big that she was constantly mistaken for being pregnant, and she was asked about 50 times when she was due to give birth.

After several months went by with no responses, the content creator booked her own ultrasound and CT scan, which revealed she had an ovarian cyst, a fluid-filled sac in her right ovary.

The mother-of-three finally underwent life-saving surgery in November to drain ten liters of fluid from the cyst, saying: “It was life-saving surgery.” If she hadn’t treated herself, she would have continued to grow and crushed my lungs, thereby suffocating me from the inside out.”

Kenia said she had her youngest son last March and her stomach never dropped after giving birth.

But it started to grow once she stopped nursing about six months later.

Kenia said: ‘The main symptoms that made me go to the doctor were having difficulties going to the toilet and sometimes I like to sleep on my stomach and I couldn’t lie on my stomach.

“Every time I ate, I had discomfort and felt very full.

“I had no idea what the symptoms were. I was wondering what was going on because I’ve never had anything like this before.

“I thought maybe it was a gastro problem, my abs didn’t recover after having a baby or maybe I had developed a food allergy.

‘I went to five different specialists – an OB doctor, a pelvic floor specialist, an allergist, a naturalist, a gastroenterologist – before scheduling my own ultrasound and CT scan.

“He was pretty persistent even before it started growing — he was at the doctors, Googled everything, and used social media to ask for help.”

“I saw a girl whose stomach looked a lot like mine and she had fibroids, which are benign tumors that can grow in the uterus.

‘I thought ‘OMG that looks like my stomach’. That initially made me think I don’t have time to wait for all these doctors to figure it out, I needed an ultrasound ASAP.’

Kenia claims that at her biggest, it hurt when her ribs were crushed, she exhausted herself and survived on shakes for three weeks because there was no room in her abdomen.

Since the operation, Kenya says she feels “like a new person” and now urges women to stand up for themselves and their health, as “we know our bodies better than anyone.”

She said: ‘It was an emergency for me to get it out because I was literally starving because I couldn’t eat anything because there was no more room in my abdomen for my stomach to grow.

‘I was in so much pain and so miserable at the end. I was drinking shakes for about three weeks, taking laxatives and was severely malnourished.

‘My stomach was growing at a really fast and alarming rate the last few weeks before my surgery. It was really scary.

“It was like having a pregnant belly, but it was soft and squishy, ​​so it didn’t feel like one.” It was bigger than when she was nine months pregnant.

‘People constantly confused me with being pregnant. I was probably asked more than 50 times when I was going to give birth or if I was going to have a boy or a girl.

“I felt bad because I finally stopped telling people I wasn’t pregnant because it would make them feel so bad because I looked pregnant, I would have thought I was too.”

Kenya said: ‘I have a newborn and two young children who I follow around and take to all their activities. Physically it was exhausting, especially towards the end.

‘When he started to crush my ribs it hurt a lot. Physically it was hard, but mentally I think it was the hardest. I felt that my body was foreign and not mine.

“I couldn’t get the doctors to figure it out, that was the most frustrating part.

“They’d say ‘ok, see you in a month’ after a checkup and I was like ‘let’s not wait a month, let’s figure this out now or tomorrow’.”

I never stopped going out, but towards the end, when I was really big, I definitely didn’t go out as much.

“I didn’t want people to keep asking me how old I was and when I was going to have this no-baby.

The TikToker underwent surgery in early November and said that the last time her stomach was measured it measured 35 cm vertically.

She said: ‘I felt great and like a new person the day after my surgery. The relief I felt was enormous.

The mother of three regularly shares TikTok videos about her ovarian cyst and has racked up more than 130,000 likes in the process.

Kenya said: ‘I feel like a lot of times women get through things because we really are so strong.

“Women handle things well and deal well with pain: we have periods, cramps, babies and other health things.

“I think sometimes we get past the pain and the symptoms, but I also want to encourage women to stand up for themselves and fight for their health and the things they need.

We know our bodies better than anyone, better than any doctor or professional.

We know when there’s a problem and we can’t let people fool us or make us feel like we’re being hypersensitive because most of the time we’re not, because women are strong.

“We deal with a lot of really difficult things, so when there’s something wrong, we need to advocate to get the help we need.”