Incredible facts
Doctors in the small Chilean town of La Boca found a petrified fetus in the womb of an elderly woman who did not even know she was pregnant.
Estela Meléndez, who is 91 years old, claims that she had a swelling in her stomach for many years, but she did not think that she was carrying a fetus.
Doctors said that the fetus has been in the uterus for more than 60 years, it is petrified and does not pose a health threat.
The woman has hearing problems and arthritis, which caused her gait to slow down slightly. For the rest, she feels good.
It wasn't until she fell recently that doctors noticed something unusual on the X-ray. At first they thought it was a tumor and ordered the woman to undergo surgery. However, after the second radiograph, specialists could not believe their eyes.
What they thought was a tumor turned out to be a fetus. The discovery came as a real shock to the elderly woman. Manuel González, Melendez's husband, with whom she lived for 74 years, died in January at the age of 91. The woman always regretted that she and her husband were never able to conceive children.
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“We suffered a lot for this reason,” the woman said.
Doctors at the local clinic first considered surgery to remove the fetus, but then came to the conclusion that surgery on a 91-year-old patient was much more risky than doing nothing.
Melendez herself states that although “swelling” sometimes hurts, it does not cause her much anxiety overall. She also said that this reminds her of her husband and her unfulfilled dream of having children all these years.
Lithopedion is a stone child
Lithopedion is a phenomenon in which the fetus dies during pregnancy and calcifies because it is too large for the mother's body to absorb.
From Greek, “lithopedion” means “stone child”. The phenomenon is so rare that a total of about 400 cases are known in history.
Lithopedione can occur during an ectopic pregnancy, when the fetus develops outside the uterus.
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To prevent the body from decomposing inside and to prevent the mother from developing infection, her body begins to calcify the fetus or mummify it in calcium. Calcification is a kind of accumulation of salts in the human body that serves as a barrier against potential infections.
Once the fetus is petrified, it remains in the mother's body and, as a rule, does not cause any complications.