A man discovers that the "beer belly" was a 34 kg tumor

Personal File

Before and After

Hector Hernandez, 47, has always been a great guy. Then, as her belly began to grow, she thought it was normal. "I just thought I was big," he told the NY Times. Whoever saw it thought that it was the beer belly. One day, a man approached him at a convenience store near his home in Downey, California, asking him to stop drinking.

It turns out that Hernandez does not drink and eat a lot. He tried vegetable-based diets, but nothing has diminished. "I wore big jackets to try to cover, but it was very visible," he said. "My belly was between my legs."

While her belly already looked like a "beach ball", the rest of her body was getting thinner. It had been a year and a half since he was living in an uncomfortable situation before seeking a doctor in 2016. However, the professional just said that some people "gain weight differently".

It is only the following year that he asks for a second opinion and discovers what is wrong with him: a tumor grows uncontrollably in his body, reaching 34 kg. The tests revealed that Hernandez had a liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer that originated in fat cells.

Although he did not feel any pain, he was suffering from constant high blood pressure, shortness of breath, constipation and heartburn, all symptoms being now be attributed to sarcoma.

It took six hours of surgery at the University of Southern California's hospital for dr. William Tseng, one of the few doctors in the United States to specialize in eliminating large soft tissue sarcomas, has removed the tumor. "It's the biggest I've ever seen," Tseng told the NY Times, accustomed to treating tumors weighing at most 9 to 13 pounds.

Fortunately, the "slow-growing giant beast" did not spread to other parts of Hernandez's body, said Tseng, but the surgical team had to remove one of his kidneys. "The tumor swallowed it, basically," said Hernandez about the kidney. "It did not work anymore."

On the other hand, Hernandez was informed that liposarcoma would probably come back. If this happens, you can become more aggressive. The only solution is more surgery, Tseng said, adding that he hoped that this type of disease, although unusual, would be the subject of more research. "We desperately need something better than surgery."

Hernandez will undergo a CT scan every four months to monitor his condition. Since the operation, she no longer feels the symptoms and regains "90%" of her normal state.

But he must now face another serious problem: medical expenses were left behind, so much so that he created a group funding page to try to raise $ 10,000 to pay the bill. In four months, however, he received only $ 2,000.