Suze Lopez, a 41-year-old nurse, was preparing for surgery to remove a massive uterine tumor weighing more than 22 pounds when a routine pre-operative pregnancy test delivered shocking news: she was pregnant.

Because of her medical background and long history of irregular menstrual cycles and abdominal discomfort, Lopez initially believed the test could be a false positive. The large ovarian cyst she had lived with for years could have affected the results, and even the possibility of ovarian cancer crossed her mind. After 17 years of hoping and praying for a second child, pregnancy seemed impossible.

Doctors soon discovered something extraordinary. Despite the enormous benign ovarian tumor filling much of her abdomen, Lopez was carrying a near full-term ectopic pregnancy. Her uterus was completely empty, yet her baby boy was growing outside the womb, nestled in a small space in her abdomen near her liver, with his body resting against the uterus.

Dr. John Ozimek, Medical Director of Labor and Delivery at Cedars-Sinai, explained that a pregnancy developing so far outside the uterus and reaching this stage is almost unheard of. Ectopic pregnancies rarely survive past the earliest weeks, making this case exceptionally rare.