upworthy

reproductive rights

Women's Health

Woman has cyst removed and is stunned to learn it had teeth, hair, and maybe even an eyeball

They're called teratomas, and they are the stuff of nightmares. They're also really misunderstood.

Canva Photos & E.dronism - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Woman lying in hospital bed.

The human body is fascinating and, to this day even, full of mysteries. Did you know there's a condition called Stoneman Syndrome where a person's ligaments slowly transform into bones? Or how about Persistent Sexual Arousal Syndrome where a person lives their entire life on the brink of orgasm? Or how about Auto-brewery Syndrome, where a person's gut biome naturally creates alcohol out of normal foods and beverages, thereby making them intoxicated without drinking a drop of booze?

The body is capable of extraordinary and extremely bizarre things, that's for sure.

That was certainly the case when 20-year-old Savannah Stuthers went in for a relatively routine cyst removal that turned out to be anything but.

Stuthers dealt with months of cramps, pain, and even bleeding—which doctors told her was normal after having an IUD inserted—before she couldn't take it anymore and took herself to the emergency room.

There, ER docs discovered a sizable cyst on one of her ovaries. Because the cyst was so large, the OBGYN at the hospital wanted to have it removed as soon as possible. Within a few days, Stuthers went under the knife.

When she woke up from the anesthesia, the doctors had news. Her mom was there to capture the moment Stuthers heard that what was removed from her body was no normal ovarian cyst. It was a teratoma—a unique kind of tumor that grows from germ cells (cells that eventually become sperm or, in Stuthers' case, eggs). Because of their origin, teratomas frequently grow hair and even teeth, along with various kinds of tissue. The teratoma inside Stuthers' ovary had all that, and more... The surgeons even thought Stuther's teratoma may have had an eyeball! (Later testing ruled this out... close call!)

Here's the exact moment Savannah Stuthers learned what had been growing inside of her:

teratoma, tumor, cancer, women's health, women, health, hospital, doctor, OBGYN, reproductive health, ovarian cystSavannah Struthers was horrified to learn that her cyst was actually not a cyst at all.www.tiktok.com

Stuthers posted the photo on TikTok where it went mega-viral to the tune of 34 million views. The morbid curiosity in the comment thread was absolutely off the charts. Many people had never heard of teratomas before, and most of them wish they still hadn't.

"Girl I could have went my entire life without looking up what a teratoma is," one wrote.

"I just looked at photos of teratomas and it made my arm get chills," a user added.

"it's crazy the body can actually create new eyes and teeth and THIS is what it chooses to use that ability for," said another.

Other commenters were just here to applaud the teratoma representation:

"this happened to me, they removed my ovary with the teratoma and my surgeous said it burst on her 😩 I was the first surgery of the day"

"this happened to my sister but there were brain cells in hers, causing her anti bodies to fight off both the teratoma braincells as well as her actual braincells putting her in a coma for 4 months. it was awful."

Of course, there were plenty of jokes, too:

"Why am I picturing Mike Wazoski from Monsters Inc???" one user said.

"Can we see it? ❌ Can it see us? ✅" joked another.

Mostly, people just wanted to know if they could see a picture of the actual teratoma. Stuthers did eventually show a photo briefly in a follow up video, but luckily for us, we can get a better look at these things through a plethora of high-res online images.

Ready? If you're squeamish, you might want to look away now.

teratoma, tumor, cancer, women's health, women, health, hospital, doctor, OBGYN, reproductive health, ovarian cystA teratoma with lots and lots of hair growth.Ed Uthman, MD. - Public Domain

Stuthers was not about to let her newfound virality go to waste: She set right to work busting myths and misconceptions about teratomas.

Obviously, with 34 million viewers and many who had never heard of teratomas, she was going to get a lot of questions. She also got a lot of opinions that needed correcting.

"Those things form from sperm so tell your man to get a better pull out game or use protection," one commenter said. In a response video, Stuthers simply wags her finger: Uh, no. Teratomas form from germ cells, which can turn into sperm, but they have nothing at all to do with sexual activity.

Another asked if the teratoma formed from a pregnancy gone wrong in the early stages. "So you would've maybe had a viable pregnancy but it didn't make it down into the uterus." Stuthers responded by citing that teratomas are actually congenital tumors, meaning they are present or begin forming prior to birth. So this was lurking in her body for a long time before it reached critical mass and had to be removed, and again, has nothing to do with her sexual activity whatsoever.

(Sorry, one more photo incoming.)

teratoma, tumor, cancer, women's health, women, health, hospital, doctor, OBGYN, reproductive health, ovarian cystAn ovarian teratoma with a long strand of visible hair.E.dronism - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

In an interview with Newsweek, Stuthers said that discovering the teratoma inside of her made her feel "gross."

"It messed me up for a while thinking about how I never knew that it was there. In a way, it made me feel gross. The photo of the tumor truly altered my brain chemistry," she said. But that couldn't be further from the truth. Teratomas, while admittedly a little freaky and frightening, are really no different than any other kind of tumor. It's their origin from germ cells which makes them capable of growing human tissue, teeth, hair, and eyeball-like structures.

But they're understandably hard to talk about. And so as a result, the general public doesn't understand teratomas very well. But Stuthers is working to change that with her follow-up videos on TikTok.

She also wants to encourage young women to advocate for themselves medically. Doctors dismissed her pain and discomfort for months before she finally went to the ER, and she's urging women to trust their gut and fight for their own bodies:

"I got lucky as we found it in time so nothing too extreme happened. But I can't help but think that if my doctors in Illinois would've listened, I would still have both ovaries. It is so important for women to express our pain and not allow doctors to invalidate us."

From Your Site Articles
women's health
Health

How abortion ban exceptions muddy ethical care for pregnant patients

"How imminent must death be?"

Pavel Danilyuk/

Obstetricians are facing impossible dilemmas with abortion care in some states.

When the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade in the summer of 2022, experts warned that there would be medical consequences. Politicians have made abortion a black-and-white issue when it's a vast ocean of gray, and doctors are now stuck in dilemma after dilemma in states like Tennessee, which enacted some of the strictest abortion laws in the nation in the wake of Dobbs.

In Tennessee, it is now a Class C felony to perform an abortion. Exceptions are made for rape and incest, ectopic pregnancy, molar pregnancy, and if "the abortion was necessary to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman."

But as OB-GYN Sarah Osmundson explained on Radio Atlantic, that last exception is "very gray." Working as a maternal-fetal specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Osmundson serves on the abortion committee that decides whether a doctor has the green light to perform an abortion to save a mother's life or bodily function. In an interview with Hanna Rosin, Dr. Osmundson shared how making those calls can feel like an impossible task as providers walk the line between ethical care and the threat of legal action.

Osmundson explained that it's unclear what the exceptions to the law even mean because there's no predictable line for when a patient will cross over into imminent death or permanent injury. "It is a continuum of risk," she said. "Where is the cut point that we have to decide some aspect of risk is too high?"

Some cases are cut-and-dried, she said, but others present a conundrum for those who are tasked with assessing whether the risk to a mother's life or health is high enough to warrant an abortion. There are no clear thresholds, especially since risk assessment isn't an exact science.

She offered an example of a patient who has diabetes combined with an autoimmune condition, but they're both currently well managed, on top of kidney disease.

"You know, these are the kind of cases where we’re really trying to guess at: What is their risk of death or serious morbidity?" she said. "And even when I see these patients in the office, like, I can’t sit down with them and say, Your risk is X percent. I don’t have data to drive that individual case. Maybe their risk of serious problems in pregnancy is like 5 percent."

Osmundson pointed out that some patients choose not to screen for chromosomal abnormalities with an amniocentesis because there's a 0.1% risk of complication and they decide it's not worth the risk. "So we don’t do certain things because of very low risk. How am I to say that a risk of 5 percent is too low of a risk?" she asked.

Dr. Lisa Harris, an OB-GYN and professor at the University of Michigan, posed a similar questions to NPR shortly after the Dobbs decision was announced.

"How imminent must death be?" Harris asked. "There are many conditions that people have that when they become pregnant, they're OK in early pregnancy, but as pregnancy progresses, it puts enormous stress on all of the body's organ systems – the heart, the lungs, the kidneys. So they may be fine right now – there's no life-threatening emergency now – but three or four or five months from now, they may have life-threatening consequences."

Osmundson gave a specific example along those lines that posed a problem for some doctors on her committee. A woman was 14 weeks pregnant with a fetus that had no skull, which meant it had no chance of survival but an increased risk of excessive amniotic fluid, which could threaten the mother's life. Osmundson thought the case warranted an abortion, but others on the committee wouldn't commit, with one saying they weren't "brave enough."

The doctors were concerned about the way the decision would be scrutinized and the potential legal consequences if someone brought the case to court. Dr. Louise King, an OB-GYN at Boston's Brigham and Women's Hospital, had warned of this scenario when Roe v. Wade was overturned.

"Laws will exist that ask [physicians] to deprioritize the person in front of them and to act in a way that is medically harmful," King told NPR. "And the penalty for not doing so will be loss of license, money loss, potentially even criminal sanctions."

The reality Osmundson described in the Radio Atlantic interview demonstrates how prescient that warning truly was.

"I feel like I’m making a decision thinking about: How would our attorney general interpret this? How would the optics appear? And it makes me feel really uncomfortable, as a physician, that I’m considering care for the optics, rather than for what is right and best for the patient," she said.

Legal abortion ban exceptions like "to prevent the death of the pregnant woman or to prevent serious risk of substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function of the pregnant woman" may sound straightforward to the average person, in the reality of medicine, it's not. Doctors aren't magicians or oracles, they don't have a crystal ball that tells them if a patient is going to live or die or be irreparably harmed—they make their best guesses based on their deep well of knowledge and experience, which lawyers and politicians deciding on legal boundaries don't have. Abortion restrictions and exceptions like Tennessee's force doctors to think as lawyers and lawyers to think as doctors when they don't have the training for it, all while people's lives hang in the balance.

The ambiguity in risk thresholds also makes these legal questions impossible to navigate. As Osmundson pointed out, a 5% risk is actually quite high, especially when it's your own life on the line. That's a hard enough choice for a person to make for themselves, much less a choice we should expect a doctor to make for someone based on political decisions and legal judgments made by people with no experience in the intricacies of medicine.

The challenges are even causing some doctors to leave states where they feel they can't care for patients properly. Kylie Cooper, MD was a maternal-fetal specialist who moved from Idaho to Minnesota in the wake of the Dobbs decision.

“My husband and I would talk about this every day. It was consuming us,” she told the AAMC. “What if I lost my license? What would happen to our kids if I went to jail? What about my guilt if I didn’t help a sick patient to my fullest ability? It was a nightmare. I didn’t feel I could remain a health care provider in a place where I couldn’t help a patient sitting right in front of me. It was unbearable.”

And for many, it doesn't seem to be a matter of making the law clearer. There are simply too many factors on an individual patient basis for more clarity in the law to even be possible, much less helpful, while also preserving a doctor's ethical standards of care.

So what's the answer?

The simplest answer is medical privacy—the protection that was provided by Roe. v. Wade—which was argued for and passed by the majority of Republican-nominated Supreme Court Justices, by the way—for doctors and patients together to decide on healthcare decisions without government interference. We were warned by doctors of what would happen when abortion laws were left fully up to each state, and now we're seeing those consequences play out in state after state.

After going through various challenging scenarios, Osmundson summed up the crux of the issue with two questions that every person ought to consider: "Do you want your cancer doctor to be considering the opinion of an attorney general when they’re making recommendations about your cancer care? Why would you want those kind of external things involved in your care during pregnancy?"

Listen to Dr. Osmundson's enlightening Radio Atlantic interview here.

From Your Site Articles
abortion access
Democracy

I did a roundtable with the Vice President about abortion. Here are 4 things that surprised me.

The conversation was important, but in some ways the experience was nothing like I expected it to be.

TheReidOut/Twitter

Upworthy associate editor Annie Reneau chatting with Joy Reid and Kamala Harris in an MSNBC roundtable

It's been a very weird week.

I'm a writer and editor—not a medical professional, legal expert or political activist in any way—so imagine my surprise when I got a message from Vice President Kamala Harris's senior advisor inviting me to join a roundtable discussion on MSNBC for the one-year anniversary of the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe v. Wade. I thought someone might be pranking me, but nope. The invite was real.

Apparently, someone had read an op-ed I'd written years ago about how it's possible to be morally pro-life but politically pro-choice and felt that my voice would add something to the discussion. The panelists included the lead plaintiffs in the Dobbs vs. Jackson Women's Health Organization and the Texas Abortion Ban lawsuits, two activists involved in the fight for reproductive rights, a Texas OB-GYN who has seen the implications of the Dobbs decision in his own practice…and me.

I felt remarkably average among these experts on the issue, but I think that was the point. My view represents millions of average American voters who may feel conflicted about where they stand on abortion morally and legally and are trying to reconcile their personal or religious beliefs with what they think our laws should be. Additionally, as someone with no political affiliation or loyalty to any party, I could speak about grappling with this issue without any partisan pressure or influence.

I'd like to point out that I'm wary of most politicians and well aware of biases in the media, so despite feeling honored to be asked, I was a bit hesitant to participate. I certainly didn't want to contribute to the partisan divide if I could help it. But because abortion is such a complex and nuanced issue, dedicating an entire hour of prime time to a discussion about it sounded like a good way to help people gain a better, broader understanding. So less than 24 hours after being asked, I was on a plane to Dallas to join the roundtable, which filmed the next day.

The full roundtable discussion is worth watching (and can be found on Peacock, with clips available on MSNBC), but I wanted to pull back the curtain and offer a peek behind the scenes because there were some things about the experience that genuinely surprised me.

1. I had no idea ahead of time what questions they were going to ask

I assumed participants in these kinds of events would be prepped ahead of time with what questions they would be asking and have ample time to prepare. This was not the case for me, and according to the fellow panelists I chatted with, it wasn't for them, either. I used my travel time to prepare a few talking points I felt I could address somewhat intelligently based on my op-ed (since that's what prompted the invite), but all I knew before arriving for the taping was that we were going to be discussing the Dobbs decision.

The only preparation we got was about 30 seconds before each segment was filmed. Joy Reid briefly explained how that segment would be structured with something like, "Okay, in this segment, we're going to talk about [some element of the abortion issue]. I'm going to ask [panelist] about [XYZ] and then pivot to [panelist] to talk about [XYZ]. But feel free to chime in if you want to respond to something. We really want this to be a conversation."

That was it. The entire prep. I was surprised—but also delighted—by how unscripted it was. No one asked me to make any specific points. I didn't feel any expectation or pressure to even agree with what was being said. Obviously, they knew where I stood based on what I'd written, but they had no idea what I was actually going to say ahead of time.

2. The conversations on-screen were no different than the ones being had off-screen by all parties involved

I think people who are skeptical of media may think that things said for the camera aren't as genuine as one would hope. Maybe that's the case sometimes, but that wasn't my experience at all here. In the green room and during the commercial breaks while filming, the conversation about the issue continued just as it did on screen, just without a host guiding it. The genuine sincerity of the discussion filled me with hope.

For instance, the OB-GYN panelist I was chatting with in the green room told me that in his 30 years of practice, he'd never had a patient come to the decision to terminate a pregnancy lightly, and we talked about the importance of keeping compassion and empathy central to the conversation about abortion. That was just our casual conversation. In the hours I was there, I overheard people from the crew to the other panelists to Joy Reid and the VP talking behind the scenes about all the things we talked about on screen. There was nothing contrived or fake about what you see in the roundtable discussion.

3. There was no atmosphere of eliteness

Despite the presence of Secret Service agents everywhere and despite being a high-profile cable news show involving the Vice President, the whole thing after going through the metal detectors felt mostly…normal.

All the people I interacted with, from the folks arranging my travel to the people headlining the show, were so down-to-earth. Everyone was genuinely nice and repeatedly expressed their gratitude to all of us for being there. I kept thinking, "Wait, aren't I the one who's supposed to feel grateful for this opportunity?" I didn't expect to feel so at ease. There was an air of professionalism, of course, but not at all a stuffy or high-pressured one.

I mean, I chatted with Joy Reid about her hot flashes while we were waiting for Kamala Harris to arrive, for goodness sake. It was obviously a serious and highly organized event with lots of moving parts, but it also felt casual and relaxed, which made it easy not to feel too nervous.

4. I came home to an immediate example of why this issue is so important

The night after I came home from Dallas, I had friends over for dinner. One of them works with pregnant women and told me about a mom who was in her second trimester and very ill. Her bloodwork looked horrible and her health was going downhill fast. It turned out she had a very rare fetal anomaly that was creating her health problem, and she needed to terminate the pregnancy or risk a dire outcome. The anomaly meant there ultimately wasn't going to be a way to save the fetus.

Her previous OB-GYN who had delivered her other children was in Idaho, and though he wanted to help her, he couldn't, because what she needed was an abortion. She wasn't at death's door yet (though technically could crash at any time), so despite the obvious need to end the pregnancy, his hands were tied by Idaho abortion laws. She then had to jump through a bunch of hoops to get to a provider in Washington who could help her, all while her health continued to be in danger.

There are countless stories like this that illustrate the very real implications of the Dobbs decision on real people, including people who don't actually want an abortion but need one. There's a tendency to try to make this issue black-and-white, but it's not. There are unique circumstances surrounding every pregnancy and every childbirth, and real women are harmed when lawmakers insert themselves into healthcare decisions with no medical expertise or training.

It's vital that we keep the moral debates separate from the legal debates on this issue. Pregnancy is a healthcare issue, deserving of medical privacy. No lawmaker needs to be in the room when a woman and a doctor are making decisions about her healthcare. People can debate the morality of those decisions all day long, but keep the law out of it.

I wasn't necessarily surprised, but I was happy to see first-hand how, at the highest levels of this unfortunately politically-charged issue, the concern behind the debate isn't about politics, but about the real people negatively impacted by the court's decision.


From Your Site Articles
reproductive rights
Democracy

Texts misleading Kansas voters about abortion amendment are a reminder to read ballots carefully

The truth is the opposite of what the texts say.

Davis Hammet/Twitter

Kansas is voting on a constitutional amendment that would open the door to restrictive abortion laws.

Getting to the truth in politics is challenging as it is and it's hard enough just to get people to vote. The last thing we need is to have voters receive direct messages telling them that voting YES on an important ballot measure will do exactly the opposite of what it will do.

Yet that's what has been happening in at least one state.

In its current election, Kansas voters are being asked to vote for or against an amendment to the state's constitution that would impact abortion laws. The Value Them Both Amendment says that there's no constitutional right to an abortion and would grant legislators the authority to regulate abortions. According to NPR, it's the first ballot measure on reproductive rights in the U.S. since the Supreme Court's decision that overturned Roe v. Wade.

The night before the election, people in Kansas started reporting text messages that sounded very much like they came from a pro-choice source. "Women in Kansas are losing their choice on reproductive rights," the texts read. "Voting YES on the Amendment will give women a choice. Vote YES to protect women's health."

However, that's exactly the opposite of what voting yes would do. Voting yes on the amendment would open the door to more restrictive abortion laws. Voting no means keeping current regulations.

The texts came from several different 888 numbers and did not disclose who they came from.

The texts are pretty clearly meant to confuse pro-choice voters into voting for the amendment, telling them that a yes vote would protect women's reproductive rights when the opposite is true. It's blatantly misleading, but according to the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, it's not illegal.

Not only do text messages about constitutional ballot initiatives not require disclaimers informing receivers of who has paid for them, but there's also nothing in the current statutes that addresses misleading wording. Lovely.

According to KMBC, the service Twilio disabled the user's account from sending out any more text messages as distributing disinformation is against the platform's terms of service. But the damage has already been done.

Naturally, people should read the ballot thoroughly before they vote and not just follow what some text tells them. However, ballots can be confusing. Language can be vague and/or biased, littered with legalese or contain muddled positives and negatives so voters aren't always clear on what they are voting for or against.

The Kansas amendment measure is confusing as it is written. Check out the language used on the ballot, as shared by The Guardian:


Explanatory statement. The Value Them Both Amendment would affirm there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion, and would reserve to the people of Kansas, through their elected state legislators, the right to pass laws to regulate abortion, including, but not limited to, in circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or when necessary to save the life of the mother.

A vote for the Value Them Both Amendment would affirm there is no Kansas constitutional right to abortion or to require the government funding of abortion, and would reserve to the people of Kansas, through their elected state legislators, the right to pass laws to regulate abortion.

A vote against the Value Them Both Amendment would make no changes to the constitution of the state of Kansas, and could restrict the people, through their elected state legislators, from regulating abortion by leaving in place the recently recognized right to abortion.

Shall the following be adopted?

§ 22. Regulation of abortion.Because Kansans value both women and children, the constitution of the state of Kansas does not require government funding of abortion and does not create or secure a right to abortion. To the extent permitted by the constitution of the United States, the people, through their elected state representatives and state senators, may pass laws regarding abortion, including, but not limited to, laws that account for circumstances of pregnancy resulting from rape or incest, or circumstances of necessity to save the life of the mother.

That's not a simple yes or no choice the way it's worded. "Do you want the state to pass restrictive abortion laws? Yes or No?" would be simple. The way this is written, you have to unravel language that's pretty clearly written to favor the amendment while also deciphering what it is you're actually voting for or against.

The text messages telling pro-choice people to vote yes because it will protect choice are 100% wrong and almost assuredly designed to confuse voters even more than the ballot already does.

It's a good reminder to ignore political messaging and to always read ballots carefully so that we know what we're voting for. Some people will go to extreme dishonest lengths to score a political win, so we must stay diligent as we exercise our civic right, privilege and responsibility.

From Your Site Articles
voting
Trending Stories