Tammy Gonzalez, from Miami, Florida, was undergoing a routine ultrasound when doctors noticed something startling: a giant bubble appearing above her baby’s mouth.
“Is that on me or the baby?” Gonzalez asked, alarmed.
Upon closer examination, doctors identified the bubble as a teratoma—a rare and typically fatal tumor that affects about 1 in every 100,000 births. The prognosis was grim, and Gonzalez was advised to terminate the pregnancy to avoid a potential miscarriage.
Refusing to give up, Gonzalez was determined to find a solution to save her baby.
“They told me that type of tumor can grow so fast,” Gonzalez recalled to ABC News. “I said, ‘There must be something we can do.’”
Gonzalez learned about endoscopic surgery, a procedure that had never been attempted for this condition. With courage and hope, she decided to go ahead with the surgery.
Dr. Ruben Quintero, director of the Fetal Therapy Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital in Miami, performed the pioneering surgery. He inserted a tiny camera and surgical tools through a quarter-inch incision in Gonzalez’s abdomen and into the amniotic sac.
Gonzalez was awake throughout the procedure.
“I couldn’t feel the incision because of the local anesthetic, but I could feel the tube going into the sac,” she described. “It felt like a popping balloon.”
The camera allowed Dr. Quintero to examine the tumor closely and assess the risk of removing it.
“It was a decisive moment,” the doctor said. “We went ahead and cut the stem, and sure enough the tumor fell right out.”
Gonzalez was overwhelmed with relief as she watched the tumor detach from her baby’s face on the ultrasound screen.
“It was amazing,” she said. “It felt like a 500-ton weight lifted off of me.”
The tumor, too large to be removed immediately, remained floating in the womb until the birth four months later, by which time it had shrunk significantly.
“She’s perfectly fine,” Gonzalez proudly said of her daughter, Leyna. “She has a tiny scar on the roof of her mouth. She talks, she drinks. She is my little miracle child.”
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