A woman who blamed her middle-aged weight gain on menopause discovered she actually had a 50-pound tumor that had been growing inside her for decades.
Brenda Cridland of Meridian was putting off her bulging stomach as a symptom of age, but when her health started to quickly decline about eight months ago she decided to see a doctor.
That's when a CAT scan revealed she had an enormous tumor that had displaced her organs and was cutting off the blood supply to her brain.
Cridland underwent two-and-a-half hours of surgery to remove the mass, which luckily was benign and was caused by undiagnosed endometriosis.
After the surgery, Cridland was 65 pounds lighter.
Brenda Cridland of Meridian, Idaho, was gradually gaining weight and was getting full very quickly. It turned out to be caused by a tumor
'My stomach was like a rock,' Cridland told KTVB.
'I would take one bite of something and it would make me feel nauseous and like it was stuck in my chest.'
But it all took a turn in February last year, when she could barely eat anything.
'I was at my granddaughter's birthday and everyone was looking at me, like, 'that's not just menopause.''
She decided to see a doctor just to be sure, so the doctor ordered a CAT scan.
Immediately, the scan revealed something was very wrong.
'He showed me the tumor on the CAT scan and it was very scary because it was cutting off the blood supply to my brain,' Cridland told KTVB.
'He said probably another two weeks it would have been life or death.'
Cridland said the mass was pushing her
