An 82-year-old Colombian woman felt an insistent pain in her abdomen and would shrug it off, thinking it was something bengin. One day, the pain became unbearable, she went to the doctor to have it examined and they discovered she was carrying around a 40-year-old fetus inside of her which caused the pain, according to NTD TV.
The patient, from Bogota who was not identified, had what is known as 'lithopedion', or stone baby, when the unborn child develops outside the womb.
According to NTD, Dr Kemer Ramirez of Bogota's Tunjuelito Hospital said that the doctor overseeing the woman noticed something 'abnormal in her abdomen' - and suspected gallstones.
"An 82-year-old patient who arrived at emergency services on December 8 with diarrhea and in the medical exam the medic who was looking over (the patient) noted something abnormal in her abdomen and ordered an exam thinking that perhaps it was gallstones. An ultrasound was done and it wasn't positive. Then, an abdominal radiography was ordered which located a tumor in the abdominal cavity which concluded that it was a fetus in the woman's abdomen," said Dr. Kemer Ramirez.
"This happens because the fetus does not develop in the uterus because it has moved to another place. In this case, the abdominal part of the woman is not a viable (place) and this is what happened, a calcified fetus because the body is generating defense mechanisms and it is calcified until it stays there encapsulated," explained Ramirez.
The patient is thought to have been transferred to another hospital to have the lithopedion removed.
This type of abdominal pregnancy reportedly occurs in every 11,000 pregnancies, of which only about 1.5% develop into lithopedion.
