A woman who was initially thought she had a tumour was left astonished when doctors discovered the real root of her agonising pain. She’s spoken up to raise awareness
A woman was left gobsmacked when she was told she had ‘multiple’ extra body parts after experiencing excruciating pain in her stomach.
After multiple tests to get to the root of the countless issues she faced, Mel Placanica was told she had two uteruses, four ovaries, two cervixes and three kidneys.
The shocking revelation meant makeup artist Mel finally understood why she suffered so badly with stomach pains and severe bleeding.
Doctors initially thought she may have had a tumour, but a deeper investigation by a gynaecologist found that she actually had extra organs, which caught them all completely off guard. However, it meant she then experienced early menopause in her thirties, something she never expected.
The 31-year-old from Adelaide, South Australia, said: “I had terrible stomach pain; just like the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my life. My mum took me to ED (emergency department) and straight away they did a scan, and they saw a uterus and this lump-type shape next to it. So automatically, they thought it was a tumour.”
Thankfully, the results came back negative to a tumour, although it delayed Mel from finding out what was wrong. She then visited a gynaecologist to have a different scan, known as a laparoscopy scan, which revealed the true results of the problem.
With the scan focusing on her stomach, it showed that Mel unknowingly had a plethora of body parts which soon led to some being removed. Mel had one uterus removed as well as two ovaries, and her two cervixes got turning into just one. Doctors also found parts of endometriosis on the lining of her uterus – which played a huge role in the pain symptoms she experienced.
Endometriosis is a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. Mel explained: “The moral of the story is that you cannot always trust a scan. A scan will not show everything otherwise everything would have showed up on the scan and it wouldn’t have taken as long as it did.
“So, I go to the gynaecologist, and she looks at my scans and she is thinking the same thing – that it looks like a tumour. I found out I had two uteruses, four ovaries, two cervixes – essentially two vaginas. I also have three kidneys so I’m assuming that maybe I could have been a twin, and I like absorbed the other one.”
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