Numerous medical advancements today have made it possible for doctors to treat and diagnose many different types of conditions. However, also because of these technological developments, there have been quite a few incidents that have left medical practitioners pleasantly surprised. Four such cases were recently published on a medical website and readers from all over are marveling at the confounding stories.
A 44-year-old man in China went into the First People's Hospital in a town called Yongkang and asked for stomach pain treatment and was taken in for abdominal pain and bloody urine. Doctors would later on subject the man to a CT scan for further investigation and were astounded to find female reproductive organs, a uterus and ovaries, inside the man's body. It turned out that this married man from the Zhejiang province was having his period. Doctors tested the patient's DNA and found that he had 2 X-chromosomes, indicating that he is genetically a female. This condition is diagnosed as the genetic disease congenital adrenal hyperplasia where the adrenal glands become swollen as a result of decreased stress hormone levels and a significant increase in male hormones causing the patient to look like a man.
In Colombia, doctors were able to discover a calcified fetus inside the abdomen of an 82-year-old woman. Judging by the extent of calcification, the fetus is estimated to be at the 40-year mark. This condition, known as lithopedion, is a rare condition that occurs in 1 out of 300 cases and is a result of an ectopic pregnancy or when a fetus develops outside the uterus, usually in the abdomen or in the fallopian tubes. In these rare cases, a dead fetus is calcified by the mother's body in order to protect itself from infection. Lithopedion is extremely rare, but can possibly be life-threatening
In a similar case, a 25-year-old female patient was having chronic stomach cramps for several months and had scheduled surgery to extricate her ovaries. During the operation, doctors found out that she was undergoing labor pains as they discovered a 36-week, 9-pound baby inside her womb. The pregnancy was undetected despite pregnancy tests because of the child's unusual position inside the uterus. On the other hand, doctors in North Carolina subjected a female patient to a C-section operation only to find that the patient's uterus was empty. The woman was later diagnosed with pseudocyesis, which is a psychiatric condition experience by women who are overly enthusiastic about getting pregnant. Condition is also known as hysterical or false pregnancy.
