Woman who thought she had ‘fat belly’ shocked after discovering what it really was

Unfortunately, it's all too common for serious medical symptoms to be blamed on weight or to be mistaken for something else.

James Van Der Beek has confessed he 'ignored' signs of colorectal cancer, while patients with bladder cancer say they didn't know their symptoms are dangerous.

There's also a layer of fatphobia, where family members and medical professionals can blame symptoms on a patient's weight instead of properly looking into the problem.

According to the World Health Organization, weight bias in medical professionals is a 'negative attitudes toward, and beliefs about, others because of their weight'.

Sometimes though, it's not even the doctors or relatives who are mistakenly blaming it on weight, but the patient themselves.

For years, one woman blamed her 'fat belly' on 'overeating', but it turned out to be far worse.

The patient was in surgery for six hours (Getty Stock Images)

A woman in Thailand, called Ratchanaporn, had been struggling for years with difficulty breathing and an enlarged stomach.

She assumed she was just overweight, until it became increasingly difficult to go about her day to day life.

After being taken to the Satun Hospital, medics originally assumed she was pregnant due to the size of her stomach.

However, after testing, the 31-year-old was told by doctors that she actually had an enormous cyst which was pressing on all of her organs.

It weighed a whopping 17lb and measured 30cm across.

The huge cyst measured 30cm across (Facebook/คลินิกสูตินรีเวชหมอธมน สตูล)

Her mother, Ratchanee said: "My baby was experiencing tightness, difficulty breathing, and bulging eyes. Her stomach looked like she was pregnant with twins.

"She’d had a swollen belly for so long, but we thought it was because she ate too much. We never imagined it was something this serious.

"We always thought it was just her love for food making her gain weight,” she added.

Ratchanaporn went under the knife for six hours in order for the tumour to be removed on July 31, along with other tissue samples to be tested.

"She went into surgery at noon and didn’t come out until around 6pm,” said Ratchanee. “It was such a long time. I was so stressed.”

Before the surgery, Ratchanaporn weighed in at 86 kilograms, but after the cyst was removed she weighed in significantly lighter at 75 kilograms.

The surgical team shared a picture of the giant cyst on Facebook, and gave an update about her condition following the surgery.

“This is just one of many similar cases. Uterine tumours and ovarian cysts are becoming more common. Luckily, this patient is now on the road to recovery," they wrote.