A 66-year-old man went to the doctor with a swollen abdomen, and discovered he was actually a woman, the Huffington Post reported.
The man had lived his entire life as a male. It turned out that he had a large cyst in on an ovary. The findings were published in the Hong Kong Medical Journal.
The subject, who was born in Vietnam, suffered from two conditions which led him believe he was a man, when all along it was quite the opposite.
The first condition is known as Turner Syndrome, which is a problem found in the chromosomes of female subjects. The syndrome is associated with infertility and being short in stature.
The syndrome only affects about one in 2,500 to 3,000 women. Most women have two X chromosomes while men have an X and a Y. Patients with Turner Syndrome usually are missing part of one of their X chromosomes, or are missing an X chromosome altogether.
The other condition was congenital adrenal hyperplasia, which increases male hormones in females.
As a result of the hyperplasia, the patient had a beard and a "micropenis," leading him to believe he was a male.
"Were it not due to the huge ovarian cyst, his intriguing medical condition might never have been exposed," doctors from two of the city's hospitals stated in the study.
The patient was four feet, five inches tall, and had stopped growing after the age of 10 when he hit puberty. He was raised as an orphan, but had no testes and had been having problems with urinary leakage since a young age.
Doctor's have only seen six cases in the past where a patient was diagnosed with both of these conditions.
According to the journal, the patient chose to continue "perceiving himself as having a male gender with the possible need of testosterone replacement."
