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ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Mary Clancey said she was resigned to being a plump old lady. Over 15 years she kept getting bigger despite dieting. But with her health deteriorating, her son persuaded her to go to the hospital.

What doctors found astounded them: A cyst in one of her ovaries had grown into a 140-pound tumour.

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Doctors at Lehigh Valley Health Network in Allentown removed the cancerous, Stage 1 mass in a five-hour operation Nov. 10.

Going in, Clancey weighed 365 pounds. After five hours in surgery, she lost 180 pounds of tumour and tissue, about half her weight, the doctors said.

“You can’t imagine in your wildest dreams something that huge,” she told Philadelphia TV station NBC10.

As she was gaining weight, Clancey, 71, of St. Clair, Pennsylvania, said doctors told her just to watch what she ate. At just over five feet tall, she said she felt destined to become “a short round, fat little old lady.”