Woman Who Was “Getting Ready To Die” Discovers That Huge Tumor In Liver Was Massive Tapeworm
A Canadian woman that was getting ready to die after a false cancer diagnosis found out that the tumor that was in her liver was actually a massive tapeworm.
Cassidy Armstrong said she had suffered pain in the right side of her abdomen for years, but blood tests and x-rays did not show any anything abnormal.
However, the symptoms of the 36-year-old worsened.
In 2019, the woman lost around 11 kilograms, started to become anemic, experienced digestion problems, struggled to sleep, and had extreme pain in her ribs.
With all the things that were going on with her body, she became concerned and thought that she had gallstones.
So she requested an ultrasound.
Upon looking at the results, the doctors realized that there was a giant mass on her liver.
This led them to diagnose fibrolamellar carcinoma, a rare type of liver cancer that affects people that are under 40-year-old.
Because the mass in her liver was so big, the doctors said that she only had a couple of years left/
During an interview with Today, she said:
I was getting ready for the worst. I was getting ready to die.
The doctors avoided a biopsy because it risked spreading cancer any further, so they went straight for surgery on November 27, 2019.
They removed the growth along with her gallbladder, 2 thirds of her liver, and some nodules on her lungs.
When the test results came back a couple of days later, it was revealed that the tumor was not a tumor after all.
It turned out that the tumor was a parasite, particularly a long tapeworm that was curled up on her liver.
She then got a new diagnosis, something that would not kill her.
The doctors diagnosed her with alveolar echinoccosis (AE), a rare disease caused by the tapeworm echinococcus multilocularis.
The disease is not fatal, but it does mean that she will have to take anti-parasite drugs for the rest of her life.
She said:
I wasn’t sure what to think. I asked them, ‘Is this good?’ and they said, ‘It’s much better than what we thought you had’.
Armstrong said she does not know how she managed to pick the disease up.