Posts
Since 2014, 28-year-old Keely Favell had been putting on immense weight in her midsection.
“I’ve always been chunky, but over the course of a couple of years, I gradually got this tummy,” Favell said. But that “tummy” eventually grew into a mass the size of seven newborn babies.
After multiple negative pregnancy tests, Favell assumed she was “just fat.” “It crept up so slowly that I didn’t know anything was wrong – I just thought I was putting on timber,” she said. But in 2016, Favell blacked out at work and suspected that something might actually be wrong. A general practitioner assured Favell and her partner of 10 years, Jamie Gibbins, that Favell was indeed just pregnant. But, she wasn’t…
See the photos and go inside the bizarre full story of Keely Favel — by clicking the link in our bio.
Ms Favell, who shed a third of her bodyweight having the mammoth growth removed under surgery, said: 'I lost sight of how difficult even simple things like driving a car or walking up the stairs had become.
'Losing my lump gave me my life back - I can't thank my surgeon enough.'
Ms Favell started gaining weight around 2014, but blamed her changing body shape on her physique.
She said: 'I've always been chunky, but over the course of a couple of years, I gradually got this tummy.
'I couldn't understand it - I was exercising and eating healthily, but I was slowly getting bigger and bigger.
'It crept up so slowly that I didn't know anything was wrong - I just thought I was putting on timber.
'I've been with my partner Jamie Gibbins for ten years and we did wonder a few times if I was pregnant - but we did home tests and they always ruled it out.'
After blacking out at work in her office admin job in the summer of 2016, Ms Favell plucked up the courage to see her GP.
She had no idea the fainting spell was linked to her inexplicable weight gain, and doctors dismissed it as a side-effect of skincare drugs.
'It was a tough period in work, and when I passed out in the office, my GP first put it down to stress,' she said.
'My blood tests came back clear and when I fainted again, this time I was told it was probably a side effect of acne tablets I'd been prescribed - but that didn't make sense because I'd stopped taking them six months previously.
'My GP didn't even attempt to examine me. I was sat there with a big coat on, so I unzipped it, pointed to my belly and said 'could it be anything to do with this?'
Ms Favell told how her GP insisted she must be pregnant, despite her blood tests having ruled out looming parenthood.
She said: 'Looking at me, anyone would have thought I was nine months gone. It wasn't the first time I'd been mistaken for an expectant mum, but my GP had the test results and should have known better.
'People had seen me waddling around, carrying this lump, and I'd been asked a few times when I was due.
'It was so embarrassing trying to explain that I was - or, so I thought - just fat. I'd go along with it to spare everyone the blushes.
'I remember trying to shop for clothes for Christmas party season in December 2016, and nothing would fit. I was skin and bone on top, then had this massive lump and normal legs below.
'I was trying to buy big to cover up the lump but nothing looked right on me.
'Everything I bought ended up going back to the shop. I was probably looking in the wrong place because in reality the only thing that was going to fit me was maternity wear.'
Convinced that Ms Favell was due to have a baby, her GP referred her for an ultrasound scan at her local hospital.
But instead of a heartwarming image of a wriggling new life, Ms Favell was presented with an ominous black screen.
She said: 'By the time I had the appointment it was January last year.
'I was lying there with Jamie beside me as the radiologist moved the probe over my tummy. I saw her eyes widen in horror, but the screen was just blank.
'The look on her face said it all - something was wrong, and when she said she had to get a consultant I started to panic. Jamie did his best to reassure me but I felt paralysed with fear.'
The consultant sent Ms Favell for an emergency CT scan which revealed a cyst surrounded by fluid.
'He told me I wasn't fat all - I was actually quite thin,' she recalled. 'But he said I had a 25cm-thick sac of fluid in my belly region.'
Ms Favell was referred to a high risk obstetrics consultant and examined in February last year.
'By this time, even walking was a struggle and I had difficulty breathing,' she said. 'I was a terrible driver because I could barely fit behind the steering wheel of my car.
'I'll never forget the look of shock on his face when the consultant examined me. He said I had a large ovarian mass and the only option was surgery.
'He couldn't say what it was, exactly, or how big. He warned me there might be more than one, and they could be attached to other organs.
'Agreeing to the surgery, I felt like I was signing my life away because, until they opened me up, no one knew for sure what they would find.
'My parents were working overseas in Australia at the time and I'd been dreading telling them what I was going through. They were 10,000 miles away and there was absolutely nothing they could do to help.
'Of course, when I eventually told my mum, Rachelle, she was on the first plane over.
'As soon as she saw me, she burst into tears - she hadn't seen me since the previous August and the change my body had undergone came as a massive shock.'
As Ms Favell waited four weeks for surgery, her stomach swelled another agonising 5 inches, she weighed in at just over 20 stone, and she was signed off work with ill health.
She finally went under the knife at Swansea's Singleton Hospital in March last year.
What she hoped would be a routine, hour-long procedure turned into a five hour marathon as her surgeon removed a giant cyst weighing an incredible 26kg.
borns in the UK tipping the scales at an average of around 3.5kg, Ms Favell's cyst - which tests later revealed was benign - weighed the same as septuplets.
Comments
Post a Comment