A Woman’s Belly Keeps Getting Bigger – Then She Realizes She Isn’t Pregnant!

A woman’s stomach kept getting bigger and bigger, only for her to finally realize she wasn’t pregnant. For most women, pregnancy is one of the best and most unforgettable moments of their lives. Sure, the constant cravings and other struggles can be annoying, but all that regret vanishes the second they welcome their little bundle of joy into the world. Sometimes, however, a small swelling in the belly can be a prelude to something far more dangerous, as one young woman was about to find out. It all started back in 2014 when 28-year-old Keely Favel noticed her clothes were fitting a bit tighter than usual.

She later recounted to the Daily Mail: “I couldn’t understand it. I was exercising and eating healthily, but I was slowly getting bigger and bigger.”

The weight crept up on her so gradually that she didn’t suspect any underlying medical issue. Keely had struggled with her weight her entire life, so she simply chalked the extra pounds up to her natural build. But things soon took a turn for the worse. No matter what Keely did, she kept bulking up, and a few months later, her stomach actually started to swell.

That was the moment she and her boyfriend, Jamie, started to wonder if she actually was pregnant. Keely ran to the store and bought a home pregnancy test, hoping the result would solve the mystery. But the answer wasn’t what she had hoped for: negative. Up to that point, Keely didn’t believe her weight gain was a good enough reason to visit the doctor. Sure, she had put on a few pounds, but who doesn’t in their twenties? Well, she soon realized the situation wasn’t as simple as it seemed when she suddenly got dizzy and lost consciousness one day while working as an office administrator.

That terrifying incident finally pushed her to schedule an appointment with her general practitioner, hoping for some kind of explanation. Yet, when she got there, the doctor didn’t even examine her properly, brushing off her health issues as mere stress. Needless to say, Keely was incredibly frustrated by this diagnosis. She had never heard of stress causing someone’s stomach to balloon the way hers had. By this point, Keely’s belly had grown so massive that everyone, including her friends, started asking when the baby was due.

The unwanted attention embarrassed Keely immensely. Since she had no idea what was actually causing the weight gain, she didn’t want to make anyone uncomfortable and just started pretending she was expecting a baby. Honestly, if she were expecting, it probably would have been quintuplets, given that Keely had ballooned from a size 14 to a size 22. Just a few weeks later, Keely blacked out again. The stress at the office had completely settled down by then, so she knew her doctor would have to come up with a different excuse for her failing health.

She immediately booked another appointment and demanded blood tests. Oddly enough, the results came back completely normal. Her doctor then claimed her fainting spells were a side effect of acne medication prescribed to her a while back. There was just one glaring issue with that theory: Keely had stopped taking those pills six months ago. Deeply annoyed and at her wits’ end, Keely bared her stomach and demanded a real explanation and a proper examination. Unsurprisingly, her doctor insisted that she was likely pregnant, even though the young woman knew for a fact she wasn’t. After all, she had been waddling around like a heavily pregnant woman for about two years at that point.

Still, she agreed to get an ultrasound at the local hospital. When Keely’s name was called, she and her boyfriend walked into the room, praying they would finally get some real answers. But neither of them was prepared for what those answers would entail. As the radiologist began gliding the transducer over Keely’s stomach, the screen showed absolutely nothing. Thinking it was a mistake or a technical glitch, the radiologist kept trying to find a sign of life. She did eventually find something, but it made her eyes go wide, and Keely instantly knew something was terribly wrong.

The radiologist quickly set the probe aside and told the couple she needed to fetch a consultant. The moment she left the room, Keely started panicking out of fear of the unknown, while Jamie did his best to comfort her. It felt like hours before the radiologist returned with a consultant, though it had really only been a few minutes. After examining Keely’s stomach and the ominous black screen, he immediately sent her in for an emergency CT scan. Following the scan, the couple waited anxiously for the results, and the doctor soon returned to deliver the bad news.

He told Keely that she was actually quite slim, but there was a 25-centimeter-thick sac of fluid sitting inside her abdominal region. However, he also admitted he had no idea what exactly this fluid sac was or what had caused it, so he referred her to a high-risk obstetrics specialist for further investigation. At this point, Keely knew it was time to let her friends and family in on the truth. Her parents were working overseas in Australia, so they couldn’t be there in person, but they did everything they could to support their daughter from afar. Their encouragement gave her the courage to go see the specialist.

When the specialist began his examination, absolute shock washed over his face. Keely said she would never forget it. The doctor informed her: “You have a large ovarian mass, and because of its sheer size, our only option right now is to perform surgery to remove it.”

He also warned her that there might be more than one mass and that there was a high probability it had fused to her other organs, making the operation incredibly complex and even life-threatening. Left with no other choice, Keely agreed to the surgery.

Unfortunately, she had to endure an agonizing wait. Even though her case was classified as an emergency, her surgery couldn’t be scheduled for another four weeks. During that torturous waiting period, Keely’s stomach swelled by another excruciating five inches—the fastest her belly had grown since the nightmare began. By then, Keely weighed just over 280 pounds and couldn’t handle basic daily activities like driving or even walking. This left her feeling absolutely miserable as she desperately waited for her operation.

By the time the day finally arrived, her parents had flown back and accompanied her and her boyfriend to the hospital. Everyone was a bundle of nerves, praying the surgery would go smoothly. What the doctor had initially planned as a routine, one-hour operation quickly escalated into a nearly five-hour ordeal. What they found inside left the medical team completely stunned. When the surgeon opened Keely up, he discovered a colossal ovarian cyst weighing a staggering 57 pounds. Just to put that into perspective: it weighed as much as an average eight-year-old child. That is an enormous amount of extra weight to carry around.

Recalling what happened after she woke up, Keely said: “He explained to me just how massive this cyst was and showed me the pictures.”

She continued: “I couldn’t believe I had been walking around for so long carrying this medical alien inside of me.”

Although the surgery left Keely with a 30-centimeter scar running from her sternum down to her pelvis and completely destroyed her right ovary, it was a small price to pay to finally be rid of the cyst. The doctors assured her that her chances of becoming a mother remained completely unaffected. Today, Keely is simply thrilled to have her normal life back, free from the worry of how she’s going to squeeze behind a steering wheel.