Woman Shocked To Discover Her Twin Had Been Lodged In Her Ovaries For More Than 40 Years.....

A mother-of- two was horrified to discover a seemingly harmless lump on her ovary was in fact the decades old remains of her unborn 'twin'.

Jenny Kavanagh, 45, made the grim discovery after she went to the doctors to have a contraceptive coil implanted and medics insisted on an ultrasound of her ovaries due to her age.

Scans revealed a 10cm mass growing in her left ovary and concerned medics warned it could rupture and kill her at any moment.

Surgeons told her it was an undeveloped unborn twin which had grown inside her from birth - complete with face, an eye, tooth, and long black hair. 

The logistics officer, from Twickenham, London, said: 'I feel very lucky that they found it and removed it before it killed me.

'I try not to think of it too much because I don't want to feel sad about it.

'If I'm honest, I did feel sad when I first saw it, because of the size and weight of it, it had already been likened to a baby.

'But I try not to feel sad about it. I try to remember that it had no heart and no brain.

'And that it would have almost certainly killed me if they hadn't found it and removed it.

'But in one sense there was grief, mixed with happiness.

'It was like a baby, but I was still glad it was out of me.'

Ms Kavanagh moved to Cyprus in 2005 with her then-husband, to escape the 'rat race'.

She said she has always avoided doctors and has never visited a gynecologist, but had no problems with either of her pregnancies.

But when she started to have heavy periods she worried it might be due to a coil she had fitted 15 years ago and went to get a new one.

The consultant scanned her abdomen and while her right ovary was totally normal, the one on the left side had a 10cm dark mass, in May this year.

Her doctor assured her it was unlikely to be a cancerous tumour - and probably a teratoma or cyst - but she said she had 'thought the worst'.

She said: 'He advised me it would have to come out regardless. If it twisted or ruptured it could kill me.'

After tests proved inconclusive, 11 days later she underwent a three-hour operation to remove the mass at The Mediterranean Hospital of Cyprus.

Doctors agreed to take a photo of the 

mass on her phone and showed her it when she came around, explaining it was a mass of cells which had been inside her since birth.

When she looked at the snaps she was shocked to see long strands of dark hair, just like hers.

'The whole thing was so surreal I think I needed to see them to get my head around it all,' she said.

'We cannot know for sure that it was an unborn twin, but the doctors said it most likely was a stem cell that I have had from birth.

'It is possible that there were twin embryos and one enveloped the other.

'The fact that it had long black hair - just like mine - a face, with one eye and one baby tooth makes it more believable.

'It's difficult to describe how I felt when I saw it. I felt shocked, very scared, horrified and it felt like an alien was inside me

'The doctor said it was like an ectopic pregnancy but that the ovary protected it.

'He said there would have been two embryos and that I was the stronger embryo and enclosed the weaker one.

'It was a stem cell that didn't stop growing, and the ovary protected it and stopped it from rupturing.

'But the bigger it grew, the bigger the chance of a haemorrhage

Ms Kavanagh, who has now made a fully recovery added: 'When I showed the picture to my mum she was really sad - saw it as her unborn child, and my unborn twin.'

culled from dailymail.