Press Trust of India
Washington, August 6: Doctors treating a 91-year-old woman in Chile with a suspected tumour got stunned after they discovered that she had been carrying a foetus in her womb for more than 60 years. Estela Melendez said she had no idea she had ever fallen pregnant. Medics in the town of La Boca discovered the foetus after spotting something on an x-ray which caused concern.
The calcified remains, which pose no health risk, had been in her uterus for more than six decades. “The doctor said I had a tumour and that they needed to operate on me,” Melendez told CNN. Melendez was married for 74 years before her husband, Manuel Gonzalez, died in January aged 91. She said one of her few regrets was that they had been unable to have children, and that the couple “suffered tremendously”. But she now considers the lump in her belly as a reminder of the baby she and her husband longed for. Doctors considered surgery to remove the foetus but deemed surgery on her as more dangerous than leaving it inside her womb.
