After having a 100-lb. baby, a mother in Florida is feeling fortunate about her “second chance” at life. surgical removal of an ovarian cyst.
Alison Fisher began having persistent stomach aches and an erratic, nearly annual menstrual cycle in 2020. The 20-year-old admitted that she was scared to visit the doctor because her weight was generally the focus, so she chose to ignore the pain.
Fisher told Action New Jax, “I let myself believe that if I ignored it, it would go away. “I was afraid. I was simply genuinely afraid.”
“I was continually told, ‘you need to lose weight. You need to lose weight,’ growing up, regardless of what I was there for—whether it was a cold or an ear infection,” she recalled. “What’s the point of going, what’s the point of listening to my body if no one’s going to listen to me, if they’re always going to tell me I need to lose weight?”
Fisher, however, saw a bulge developing on her stomach as the symptoms grew worse. She became concerned after reading posts on social media concerning ovarian cysts. She found it impossible to walk or even stand for more than five minutes since her tummy felt “rock hard.”
She said, “I felt like I was carrying ten children.” “I felt like all of my organs were being crushed, so I couldn’t lay on my stomach.”
Sometime before Christmas 2022, when the mass began affecting Fisher’s capacity to breathe, she finally saw a doctor.
She was informed by Ascension St. Vincent’s gynecologic oncology specialist Dr. Martin Martino that she had a 104-lb. ovarian cyst that was growing inside of her and required surgery to remove because it had roughly 46 liters of fluid.
In [Fisher’s] case, Martino told the source, “what was very remarkable is that once we removed it, we looked at the other ovary since now we could see it, and the other ovary was twisted three times.” Fisher’s left ovary was around 10 cm long, which made it much easier for us to untwist it and preserve Fisher’s future fertility and potential to become a parent.
Fisher remarked after a successful procedure that has the cyst removed is like getting a “second chance” at life.
She said, “I feel so much lighter, I feel like a human. I can see my feet again, something I haven’t been able to do in years. I can stand a little bit longer. Moving forward, I am in the early phases of weight-loss surgery, and I am really enthusiastic about what life has in store for me. I can wear clothes, I can do things that normal people can do.
Fisher continued, “There are other heavier folks out there that are simply so terrified to go to the doctor because of their weight. They are in my position. All I want is for children to understand that they shouldn’t be afraid.
The Mayo Clinic reports that “many women acquire ovarian cysts at some point,” the majority of which “cause little or no discomfort and are innocuous.”
Large or ruptured cysts, however, “may produce significant symptoms,” such as pelvic discomfort, fullness or heaviness in the belly, and bloating, according to Mayo Clinic.
