Doctors remove a 36-year-old baby skeleton from a woman's body


In 1978, a 24-year-old pregnant woman from the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh reportedly received the terrible news that she was suffering an ectopic pregnancy, in which the fetus grows outside the womb. The pregnancy did not go to term, just as doctors predicted, and the woman was told to have surgery to remove the fetus.
Fearing the prospect of going under the knife, the woman, according to the Times of India, sought treatment at a health center in her village instead. After a few months, the pain faded.
Recently, the now 60-year-old woman reported suffering consistent pain in her abdomen. Doctors detected a lump and ran her through several tests, which ultimately revealed that the mass was a child's skeleton. A team of surgeons from a hospital in Nagpur performed the rare procedure of removing the skeleton that had lived in the woman's body for 36 years.
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If you're intrigued (and somewhat twisted), you can try to decipher the skeleton in the woman's CT scan, which is posted on the Daily Mail.
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Lauren Hansen produces The Week’s podcasts and videos and edits the photo blog, Captured. She also manages the production of the magazine's iPad app. A graduate of Kenyon College and Northwestern University, she previously worked at the BBC and Frontline. She knows a thing or two about pretty pictures and cute puppies, both of which she tweets about @mylaurenhansen.
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