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  • 26 minutes ago
When Suze Lopez began preparing for surgery to remove what doctors believed was a 22-lb. tumor, she never imagined a routine pregnancy test would change her life forever. After years of believing a second child was impossible because of ovarian cysts, she was stunned to learn she was not only pregnant, but nearly full term. In this remarkable interview, Suze, her husband Andrew, and Dr. Ozimek share the unbelievable story of how a miracle pregnancy went undetected until just days before delivery, the complex surgery that saved both mother and baby, and the emotional journey that transformed what was supposed to be a tumor removal into the birth of their long-awaited son.

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Transcript
00:00How is it possible she didn't know she was pregnant?
00:02That's the question everybody has.
00:04I know it sounds insane.
00:06It is.
00:06It is insane.
00:07I had a 22-pound tumor and a full-term baby
00:10hiding behind it.
00:11If I saw this story on the news,
00:13I would say that doctor's making it up.
00:16That's how incredibly unbelievable this is.
00:21No cravings.
00:23No kicking.
00:25No nausea, vomiting like that.
00:27None of the symptoms that you would think
00:29a pregnant person would have.
00:31And that's why everybody's like, nah, nah.
00:34You had to have known.
00:35When I had our daughter, Kyla,
00:38I felt the baby kicking.
00:39I felt the baby moving.
00:41I had nausea, vomiting.
00:43I had all the symptoms of a pregnant person.
00:47Susie hadn't had a period in years.
00:48She was uncomfortable and nauseous for years
00:51from this really large 20-plus-pound mass
00:54that it is extraordinarily plausible
00:57to attribute all of that to that mass that she has.
01:01So this is a circumstance where it's very, very understandable
01:05that she didn't know she was pregnant.
01:06The first thing I said to her was,
01:07girl, you have a mass.
01:08And you could just see this big basketball-sized mass
01:11that's a little bit different than just a pregnant belly.
01:14First, all you see is black on the screen.
01:16And so I had to move her around and move her around.
01:18And finally, I could see parts of a baby or a fetus.
01:22Finally, I found what I thought, okay, here's a femur.
01:24I can see a femur, so the thigh bone.
01:26And that's a really easy, quick way
01:28if you can measure that bone
01:29to say how far along the pregnancy is.
01:31And I measured it, and it said 37 weeks, which is full term.
01:35Mind blown.
01:37We were high school sweethearts.
01:40We hadn't discussed kids until we got pregnant.
01:42Our firstborn was actually a miracle birth for us.
01:45Before I got pregnant, they had found ovarian cysts,
01:49so they removed my right ovarian cyst.
01:51And they kept the left one so that I could have potential children
01:55or just to keep my hormones.
01:58When I had our daughter, Kyla,
02:00she'd always ask for a brother or sister.
02:03Throughout the years, we were like,
02:05sorry, it's not happening, Kyla.
02:07You're going to be an only child.
02:09In the back of my mind,
02:10I always wanted to have a sibling for my daughter.
02:13I knew that if my left ovary was removed,
02:16it would eliminate all chances of having a second child.
02:19My cyst would grow one pound a year.
02:21Over time, I would see that it would grow,
02:23and everybody would say, it's time to get it out.
02:26But I wasn't feeling like going through surgical menopause
02:28at that point, so that's why I just kept it.
02:31So I'd have certain changes in my body
02:33where my stomach would grow exponentially larger.
02:36My feet would swell.
02:39I would start to get short of breath.
02:41I just figured the cyst was getting larger.
02:45If I had any kind of discomfort, I'd be like,
02:47oh, it's the cyst.
02:48I'd always blame it on the cyst.
02:49I would never think about anything beyond it.
02:51That was the only reason why I didn't discover this baby
02:54beforehand is because I just kept blaming it on the cyst.
02:58I finally told the doctor, hey, let's get this cyst removed.
03:01It's time.
03:02It's growing too big.
03:05So the doctor ordered for blood work and a CT scan.
03:08I did the blood work, and then prior to the CT scan,
03:11I did a pregnancy test.
03:13It was positive, and I couldn't believe it.
03:15Those give false positives all the time.
03:17So I checked it again, and it was positive,
03:20and it checked again, and it was positive.
03:21So I was like, okay, what do I do next?
03:24I found out on a Wednesday, and then I
03:28knew that we had a Dodgers game coming up on Friday.
03:32I got a little onesie, and I said,
03:35Baby Lopez coming soon, 2025.
03:37I was in disbelief, to say the least.
03:43On that same trip, we had a checkup at Cedars-Sinai.
03:46They were asking me, hey, have you had any prenatal care?
03:49Have you seen a doctor?
03:51When was your last menstrual period?
03:52I'm like, I don't know.
03:53I don't know any of that kind of stuff.
03:55Sorry, my stomach is growing.
03:56That's all I know, and I found out
03:57that I'm pregnant five days ago.
03:59I got a phone call from the residents,
04:01and their quote from the beginning was,
04:03it's a little bit of a mess.
04:05She just learned she was pregnant.
04:07She has this really big abdominal mass,
04:09and she doesn't really feel very well,
04:11and we're having a hard time seeing the baby.
04:13I was there in about 15 minutes.
04:15They called him in.
04:15He wasn't working that day.
04:17The residents were like, you have to see this.
04:18Then when I saw where the pregnancy was,
04:20and that she was full-term and that it wasn't inside the uterus,
04:24I immediately knew that she was not leaving this hospital
04:27before that baby was delivered.
04:29None of this should be happening to us.
04:31What we do, we tried so long ago to have a second kid,
04:36couldn't, and we're always told we would never have a second kid.
04:40The moment I saw the scan, I was a little bit in disbelief.
04:43There is a baby just sitting in that woman's belly.
04:46Why are their eyeballs looking straight at her liver?
04:49An ectopic pregnancy is a pregnancy that is in a location
04:52that it is not supposed to be in.
04:54Ectopic pregnancies account for about 1% of all pregnancies,
04:59and abdominal ectopic pregnancies, which was the case with Susie,
05:03account for 1% of ectopic pregnancies,
05:06so a tiny, tiny minority.
05:07She ovulated.
05:08This egg was released from the ovary far from the fallopian tube.
05:13On the top portion, there's this very well-labeled big area
05:16that's called the tumor,
05:16and directly below that is the baby.
05:20The baby's eyeballs just kind of staring right at you on the screen,
05:23and then its little bottom sitting very conveniently
05:25right on top of the outside of her uterus.
05:28We don't know if there was ever amniotic fluid,
05:30in which case this baby may not have any lungs that function,
05:33in which case the baby won't be able to survive after it's delivered.
05:36And I believe I gave her, you know, a 50-50 chance.
05:39We talked about how even taking every single precaution,
05:42there's always still a chance that nature takes its course,
05:45and we cannot control the bleeding,
05:47and there's the potential that she doesn't survive the case.
05:49I was pretty scared at that point.
05:51The odds of everything coming out perfect was like tens of millions to one.
05:57I told Susie that we really needed to sit down and do some videos.
06:02Right before surgery, I did do a couple of recordings for Kyla in case the surgery didn't go well,
06:10and then I passed away.
06:11Hey Ky, I just wanted to wish you a Merry Christmas.
06:14Happy graduation.
06:16So proud of you.
06:18I knew you could do it.
06:20I know that you're going to be great in your future.
06:24They asked me how long they wanted to do CPR on the baby,
06:27if the baby wasn't having any heartbeat or breathing.
06:32That was a really tough question that I had to answer.
06:36We assembled a lot of people,
06:39definitely around 30 people that were in there to help Susie and Andrew and baby Ryu.
06:43I can't emphasize enough that this was a team effort.
06:46It was a team that saved Susie.
06:48It wasn't just one individual doctor or nurse.
06:50As soon as that mass was out of the way,
06:52there was this baby, this eight-pound baby,
06:55just laying in her abdomen where it absolutely should not be,
06:59with an umbilical cord.
07:00And there was still an amniotic sac around this baby.
07:03They found that they just moved the cyst over
07:05and they were able to take the baby out in four minutes.
07:09This baby had a full head of hair, like full thick hair,
07:13laying in her belly, you know?
07:16It was just a really, just something that your brain can't quite comprehend.
07:20It was, it was, it was wild.
07:22And immediately after we delivered the baby,
07:24which is often the case, some of those vessels started to bleed.
07:27And so we had to work very, very rapidly to tie those blood vessels off methodically.
07:33The only way that we could get that bleeding under control
07:35was to essentially proceed with a hysterectomy.
07:38So an average person has about five liters of blood.
07:41And during this surgery, Susie lost about four and a half liters.
07:45If this would have happened somewhere that doesn't have these resources,
07:48there is no way that she would have survived.
07:50And very unlikely that the baby would have survived either.
07:54I wake up and I'm in the ICU and the baby's in the NICU
08:01and we're apart from each other.
08:03But I find out that it's a boy.
08:05It was the best feeling in the world to finally see this little guy
08:09who created so much drama and chaos.
08:12He's definitely a fighter.
08:14So in Street Fighter, there's a character named Ryu.
08:18And so we named him Ryu.
08:19His name is Jesse, and that means gift from God.
08:22And our child is definitely a gift from God.
08:25I went up to see him in the NICU.
08:26And I went up to see him every day and I would just put my hand on his little head
08:30because it was such a miracle.
08:34I hate saying miracle, but it really was.
08:38It really was this perfect little adorable baby.
08:41He was sort of the movie star of the NICU.
08:43He was the movie star of the hospital.
08:45He cried the whole way home, but that was okay.
08:47I was like, you know what?
08:49Even if he cries, his lungs work.
08:53Ryu is certainly the most miraculous and wonderful outcome that I think I've had
08:59in my years as a high-risk pregnancy specialist.
09:02I'm going to tell Ryu that he's definitely meant to be here.
09:06He brings a lot of people joy, and he completes our family.
09:10I'm going to tell him he chooses to join me.
09:11So, how do you know his birthday?
09:12You can see the last year, the last year.
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