Extreme case of common condition left woman looking eight months pregnant - for eight YEARS

The affliction also cruelly robbed Beryl Romain of her chance to have children, prompting the break-up with her fiance

An extreme case of a common condition left a woman stuck looking like she was more than eight months pregnant – for eight years.

The affliction also cruelly robbed Beryl Romain of her chance to have children.
This picture shows Beryl ­looking nine months due after an 18-inch growth – a ­fibroid – swelled in her stomach.

Beryl put off surgery that would remove her womb and travelled abroad in a desperate attempt to find a cure.
She even took herbal remedies from a traditional practitioner in Ghana, West Africa.

Beryl, a housing worker from Ilford, Essex, speaking to the Sunday People said: “People were always asking me when the baby was due and looked amazed when I told them I wasn’t pregnant. I waddled around ­because I was so big.”
Their questions were made all the more ­painful by the fact Beryl’s fiancé left her because she was unlikely to conceive.
She said: “I was due to get married in 1999 when I discovered a small lump in my side.

“The doctor told me it was fibroids and I’d need to have my uterus removed. My husband-to-be was unable to cope with the idea and we ended up separating. I lost everything.”

For the next three years the fibroid grew slowly, then flared up. By 2007 she looked ­heavily pregnant. Yet Beryl ­refused to give up hope of ever having a family.

She researched her condition and discovered the non-­cancerous, blood-filled lumps are two to three times more common in Afro-Caribbean women.

A drug was recently developed which could have prevented Beryl needing surgery

Around 50 in every 100 women develop fibroids by age 50.
Experts believe the figure is as high as 90 per cent for Afro-Caribbeans.

Most women have no idea they have fibroids until they show up during routine gynaecological examinations. But for others the symptoms can include long ­painful periods, bloating, pain during sex, fertility problems and even miscarriage.

Doctors have no idea what causes them to develop.
Beryl funded her trip to Ghana by selling her house in London. She wanted to find out how women there were treated for the condition. When the herbal remedies failed she went to Nigeria and spoke to doctors there, then to Atlanta in the US.

Each time she left with little hope of being able to have ­treatment and remain fertile.

Beryl finally had surgery to remove her fibroids and womb at Guy’s Hospital, in London, last year. She said: “It’s ­devastating to think I won’t have the same choices as other ­women. I tried to avoid surgery but it just wasn’t to be.”

Sadly, had Beryl held out for one more year she may have been able to save her fertility. A drug called Esmya, ­approved in 2012, was first used to shrink fibroids ­before patients had ­surgery to remove them.

But trial results have since shown the drug, taken as a daily pill, is incredibly ­effective and can be prescribed long term. It will rule out the need for ­surgery for many women.

Beryl said: “It makes me tearful to think had I just held on another year I may have escaped ­surgery. But I’m so glad there’s something out there to stop other women going through the same horrible experience I have.”