In pain for more than 16 hours

In 2006 when Mrs Cynthia Leong was 16 weeks pregnant, she was woken by a sharp, stabbing pain in her abdomen one morning. She called her doctor, who said that she could have torn a muscle and told her to rest in bed. But Mrs Leong felt that the pain was unusual and feared it would endanger her baby, so she checked herself into KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital by 8am that morning. The pain did not go away even with painkillers. She said: “The pain was continuous and grew more intense. Whenever I moved, I would scream in pain.”  

Three ultrasound scans showed her foetus was in the right position in the uterus. As doctors decided it was not a gynaecological problem, she was transferred to Tan Tock Seng Hospital that night to be examined for other conditions like appendicitis and stomach ulcer. However, even after an X-ray examination, no one could determine the reason for the pain. Her condition took a turn for the worse at midnight, when her blood pressure plummeted to a dangerously low level. She was rushed into emergency surgery and doctors finally saw the ruptured ectopic pregnancy. The foetus was in her right fallopian tube and buried deep in the wall of the uterus. 

The surgeon, Dr Christopher Ng, noted it was a rare form of ectopic pregnancy, known as cornual pregnancy. This condition is more difficult to diagnose than other ectopic pregnancies as the foetus may appear to be in the right place in the mother’s uterus on an ultrasound scan. Dr Ng, an obstetrician and gynaecologist who now works at GynaeMD Women’s and Rejuvenation Clinic in Camden Medical Centre, said he has seen fewer than 10 such cases in his 13 years of practice.  He said Mrs Leong had massive internal bleeding and was in danger of going into shock. During surgery, he removed her ectopic pregnancy, part of her uterus and right fallopian tube. 

Six months after the incident, she was pregnant again and gave birth to a healthy baby boy through Caesarean section in 2007. She said: “I count my blessings that I was able to survive that devastating period.”