THE 40-YEAR-OLD FETUS? WHAT?

I want to start this blog off with I'm not even sure if I believe this story. It's just way too bizarre! Anyway, an 82-year-old woman in Colombia went to the hospital complaining about some stomach pains, but doctors discovered something astounding! The woman was carrying a 40-year-old fetus. What? Biologically, how can this even happen? 

Well, apparently, the dead, calcified fetus is a very rare instance of a lithopedion, or as they call it "stone baby," which results from an ectopic pregnancy where a fetus is conceived outside the uterus in the abdomen. In some cases when an abdominal fetus dies, the mother’s body calcifies it in order to protect the rest of the body from infection. The chances of abdominal pregnancy are estimated at one in every 11,000, and lithopedic pregnancies account for less than 2 percent of these.

The Colombian woman will have to undergo surgery to have the mass removed. Only about 300 cases of lithopedia are accounted for in medical literature. The earliest record happened in France in 1582. In that case, the doctors discovered during an autopsy of a 68-year-old woman that she carried a stone baby for an estimated 28 years. Women carrying a lithopedion often remain clueless unless, as in this case, a complication emerges. 

Doctors at Tunjuelito Hospital in Bogota initially suspected the unnamed woman was suffering from gastroenteritis and announced their findings on December 9. Here's what I don't get; How did this lady not complain about stomach pains before? If she did, why did it take 40 years to discover this dead fetus inside of her? If this story is true, it really makes you question modern medicine doesn't it? How are these doctors making all of this money when they can't detect something as simple as this?