Doctors in Colombia got a huge shock after running some tests on a woman who arrived at a hospital in Bogota complaining about abdominal pain. It turns out the 82-year-old lady was in extreme discomfort because she was carrying around a 40-year-old fetus.

Doctors in Colombia got a huge shock after running some tests on a woman who arrived at a hospital in Bogota complaining about abdominal pain. It turns out the 82-year-old lady was in extreme discomfort because she was carrying around a 40-year-old fetus.

Called Lithopaedion or stone baby, it’s an exceptionally rare syndrome in which a fetus dies during an ectopic pregnancy or when it is implanted outside the uterus. If the fetus is too large to be absorbed by the body, the mother’s immune system will cover the fetus in layers of calcium, leaving the woman unaware of what’s going on as she would be protected from dead fetus.

That means the phenomenon can go undetected for many years. As for the elderly woman, doctors initially suspected she had gastroenteritis, however an ultrasound proved them wrong. An abdominal x-ray is what revealed the four decades old fetus.

The elderly female was transferred to another hospital to have surgery for the fetus removal. There are only about 300 reported cases of Lithopaedian in medical history.