MRI results and...unexpected news.

[Bardmaiden]

My aunt had what was likely one of these.

When they found it, they estimated it was the size of a softball. When they finally pulled it out, it turned out to be the size of a pineapple and weighed something like 6 lbs.

^-.-^

My b/f's mum was admitted to hospital with bad pain in the lower abdomen, investigation and surgery later she had lost 2 and half stones from a one of these...which had twisted and caused the pain.

[Andara Bledin]

My b/f's mum was admitted to hospital with bad pain in the lower abdomen, investigation and surgery later she had lost 2 and half stones from a one of these...which had twisted and caused the pain.

35 lbs?!? Yikes!

^-.-^

[Bardmaiden]

She also went down two dress sizes, she was pleased with that

[AccountingDrone]

Teratology - the study of faulty development - is a fascination of mine.

Studying such misdevelopments can provide major assistance to scientists researching not just congenital diseases, but other diseases as well. If you don't especially care what happens to the cyst when they remove it, please consider donating it for research. (They might also, if you do that, ask you for a cheek swab so they can compare your healthy DNA to the teratoma's DNA and RNA.)

The good news is that it's benign (or at least, has some chance like 99.999% of being benign), and once removed it's gone for good. Almost all of these are just bits of you that got the wrong message in utero, and instead of becoming what they were supposed to become (in this case, ovary), became something else.

If you get one from Yale-New Haven that combines a dermoid and a lipoma, tell it I don't miss it ... damned thing was the size of a softball ... But at least it wasn't as bad as the tumor off the other ovary.

I signed off on donating it. I was considering asking for a small section of it in preservative for the mantle but hubby talked me out of it

[LewisLegion]

I think I probably would donate it. Lord knows I don't want it so it might as well go to some use, right?

[Seshat]

Some of them, I've recently read, contain stem cells. And in this case, it's stem cells that have no chance of ever becoming a viable person (or any viable organism, for that matter); so there's not the ethical problems for stem cell research.

You never know, in time, one person's teratoma might become another person's donor heart.

[Rapscallion]

From what I understand, endometrium also contains stem cells and is easily harvestable.

Rapscallion

[Fire_on_High]

It's a hopeful thought, Seshat, but won't they carry the same flaw that made them part of a tumor to begin with?

[Seshat]

It's a hopeful thought, Seshat, but won't they carry the same flaw that made them part of a tumor to begin with?

No - they've worked out how to direct stem cells to form particular organs. The flaw is that these cells received the wrong chemical instructions. Give them the instructions to make a heart, or a pancreas, or a lung, or a liver, and they'll go ahead and do it.
The flaw is not inherent in these cells, it's in the instructions they received while in utero.

[LewisLegion]

Dude, that's so cool.

Or would be, if they weren't busy making those things in my ovary. *ROFL*

[Seshat]

I told you it was a fascinating study!

... in the abstract.

Less cool when it's in you, yes.