An 81-year-old woman died after having surgery to remove a rare “stone baby” she had carried for more than 50 years.
Daniela Almeida Vera died a day after the operation to remove the calcified foetus from her abdomen. Her family revealed she had been too scared to see a doctor for many years, even though she often complained of severe stomach pains.
Instead, she chose alternative medicine to cope with her problems, her daughter, Rosely Almeida, 21, said. It was only after a 3D tomography scan that the hidden ‘stone baby’, dating back to her last pregnancy, was discovered, The Mirror reported.
This unusual condition, known as a lithopedion, happens when a foetus dies but can’t be absorbed by the mother’s body. Instead, it stays in the abdominal cavity, forming a calcium shell around it. Daniela was urgently transferred to Ponta Pora Regional Hospital in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil, with a generalised infection.
Before this shocking discovery, doctors thought she might have had cancer. Daniela, from an indigenous tribe near Brazil’s border with Paraguay, has sadly passed away, leaving behind a big family of seven kids and 40 grandkids. She had an operation on March 14 but didn’t make it and died the next day while still in hospital.
Her daughter Rosely said: “She was elderly and we are indigenous people. She didn’t like going to the doctor and she was afraid of the equipment used to carry out tests.”
