Doctors Were Shocked to Find the Cause of This 24-Year-Old's Stomach Pain

The first time Johanna Dickson had excruciating stomach pain, she assumed it was food poisoning, she told the Washington Post, but after the second and third attacks, she rushed to the hospital.

Dickson experienced these episodes six months and one year apart, so she assumed they were unrelated. In 2008, when the third one hit, her family doctor decided that based on the results of her CT scan (and the fact that she'd lost 5 pounds between 7 a.m. and noon the day of it), she needed emergency surgery to fix a bowel obstruction.

Both the doctor and the surgeon still could not determine the reason for the obstruction (a partial or complete blockage of the intestines sometimes caused by hernias, Crohn's disease, or scar tissue from a previous surgery, among other things). "I remember hearing something about my intestine being really badly tangled and that it was something you [usually] see in people over 60," Dickson told the Post of what she overheard before surgery in a morphine haze.

Finally, in the surgery, they found the source of the obstruction: a plum-sized desmoid tumor her intestines had probably wrapped around, causing her immense pain. It was unclear at first whether or not the tumor was benign, but because it was attached to Dickson's abdominal wall, she was diagnosed with mesenteric fibromatosis. Only 900 Americans are diagnosed with desmoid tumors like these each year.

Though Dickson continually monitors her stomach pains and sees an oncologist, there have thankfully been no recurrences so far. You can read her story in its entirety here.

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