A woman who strangers thought was pregnant and who doctors told to simply lose weight actually had a huge ovarian cyst.

Crystal Dominguez says she started having irregular periods, sharp stomach pains and abdominal swelling back in late 2018 but was told by doctors that she just needed to lose weight.

The 26-year-old’s stomach ended up swelling so much that strangers would ask her when her due date was.

Crystal, of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, US, became so uncomfortable with the questions and stares that she remained housebound for months.

Crystal, who works in social media marketing, said when she first went to the doctor, she was told her symptoms were ‘normal’ and down to her birth control.

She said: ‘My periods were very irregular and always heavy.

‘I had weight gain in my stomach. It would never go away, and it wasn’t normal fat where I’d have rolls. My stomach was very hard and smooth.

‘It looked really round to the point where I looked like I was pregnant with like three babies beyond full term.

‘I also had very sharp stomach pains. It wouldn’t be all the time it was sometimes in my lower stomach, and then it was really tight.’

But Crystal says that her symptoms persisted even after she stopped taking birth control. When she went back to the doctors, they advised her to lose weight.

Crystal said: ‘The doctors essentially said “you’re just fat”. They sent me to a nutritionist and that was it. That was basically their version of saying that I was big and that’s all.

‘A lot of them told me that I needed to start to work out and change my eating habits. They didn’t even bother to examine my stomach.

‘I explained my symptoms to them, but I felt like they wouldn’t hear me or care. I also felt like I wasn’t heard because of me being a mixed [race] woman. I felt like they didn’t pay attention to me.

‘It was really hard and depressing. I went to the doctors, and they really just convinced me I was fat.

‘I wouldn’t leave the house because I was embarrassed. I went to the gym twice a day. I ate but didn’t eat enough. I was always like “ok, I can’t eat because I’m too fat”.’

The weight from the cyst also made her back hurt, meaning she couldn’t stand for long periods of time.

On top of all that, she had to field awkward questions from total strangers.

Crystal said: ‘Everybody thought I was carrying a child, so then they’d always ask me questions like “oh my God, you’re pregnant? When are you due?” and things like that which made me uncomfortable to the point I didn’t leave the house for months.

‘People would stare and come up to me and touch my stomach, and it would just be very uncomfortable. I would tell them I wasn’t pregnant, and it would get awkward and weird.’

Just when she’d ‘lost hope’ of getting a proper diagnosis, the ‘basketball-sized’ cyst was finally found after a different doctor noticed how round her stomach was in 2020.

Crystal had the cyst surgically removed a week later, along with one of her ovaries, which had been ‘crushed’ by the growth.

‘When I got my scans they told me my cyst was the size of a basketball,’ said Crystal. ‘And a week later when I got out of surgery I’d lost 68 pounds of fluid from my stomach.

‘After my surgery, the surgeon came into my room and told me that I was lucky because if that cyst had ruptured, they would not have been able to save me because it was that big.

‘A cyst can rupture doing anything and at that time I was going to the gym twice a day.

‘It was a ticking time bomb.’

It took Crystal three to four weeks to be able to walk again, and eight weeks to heal fully.

‘Once it was removed,’ she said, ‘it was super scary because the cyst pushed out all my organs and ribs so afterwards was horrible.

‘I would stand up, and it would feel like all of my organs were coming out of my body, and it was painful because they were trying to move back.

‘I felt my insides move, and it’s just the weirdest feeling to describe.

‘At first I was really embarrassed [to share my story online] because of my photos. I thought I looked really fat, but I have to realise that I survived this and went through this for a reason and I truly believe that my reason was to be able to help someone else.

‘I’d say to other women that you know your body better than anyone else in the whole world and if you feel like something is wrong please, from the bottom of my heart, go and get checked out.

‘And if a doctor doesn’t listen to you, go to someone else and keep doing that until you find someone. You have to fight for yourself.’

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