Here’s a living nightmare: an 82-year-old Colombian woman went to the hospital for stomach pain only to learn that she’s had a calcified fetus hanging out in there for 40 freaking years.
X-rays of the woman’s abdomen revealed a condition called Lithopedion, or “stone baby.” It’s apparently super rare, with only 300 known cases in the world. It begins as an ectopic pregnancy, whereby the fetus gets stuck on its way to the womb and develops outside of the uterus. But if the fetus is too large to be absorbed back into the body, it goes through a mummification process, becoming calcified in order to protect the mother from the decaying fetus.
