Woman resigned to being plump learns she had 140 lbs tumor

6-pound tumor removed from Gambian girl’s mouth

ALLENTOWN, Pa, March 11, (AP): Mary Clancey said she was resigned to being a plump old lady. Over 15 years she kept getting bigger despite dieting. But with her health deteriorating, her son persuaded her to go to the hospital.

What doctors found astounded them: A cyst in one of her ovaries had grown into a 140-pound tumor.

Doctors at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown removed the cancerous, Stage 1 mass in a fivehour operation on Nov 10.

Going in, Clancey weighed 365 pounds. After five hours in surgery, she lost 180 pounds of tumor and tissue, about half her weight, the doctors said.

“You can’t imagine in your wildest dreams something that huge,” she told Philadelphia TV station NBC10.

As she was gaining weight, Clancey, 71, of St Clair, Pennsylvania, said doctors told her just to watch what she ate. At just over 5 feet tall, she said she felt destined to become “a short round, fat little old lady.” The tumor didn’t really cause her pain. “It just made itself comfortable in there,” she said.

But by the time she went to the hospital, it had become difficult for her to walk and even stand. Randolph Wojcik Jr, MD lifts gallons of water on March 9, that represent the 140-lbs tumor that was removed. Mary Clancey, 71, of St Clair, Schulkill county (center), and her surgeon, Richard Boulay, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Lihigh Valley Health Network (LVHN) together discuss how Boulay and his surgical team removed a 140-pound malignant ovarian mass from

Clancey last November. (AP)

Dr Richard Boulay, who performed the operation, said the mass was so big it didn’t even fit in the picture

taken by a CT scan.

“It was slowly killing her,” Boulay said Thursday during a news conference

at the hospital.

Janet

Sylva

Twelve-year-old wants to be a doctor when she grows up, she says with a broad grin — one that surgeons in New York gave back to the girl from Gambia after removing from her mouth one of the largest tumors they’d ever seen.

The 6-pound benign tumor was about the size of a cantaloupe. It prevented Janet from eating, and her breathing had become so difficult that doctors were afraid she might die within a year if nothing was done.

“It made her a prisoner in her own body,” said Staten Island surgeon who became aware of Janet’s plight last year after doctors in the neighboring west African nation of Senegal reached out to international health groups for assistance. She had stopped going to school and wore a scar§f around her face to hide the massive tumor.

Hoffman coordinated with the Global Medical Relief Fund and a team of volunteer surgeons and other medical staff at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park on Long Island to arrange for Janet to have the surgery, which was performed for free in January.

Dr David Hoffman,a