A few weeks before Thanksgiving, Darlene Hildebrandt and her husband welcomed their first child. They may never have met their healthy baby boy, and Hildebrandt herself may have faced life-threatening risks, had they not been referred to UC Davis Health. She found the right high-risk obstetrics and neurosurgical care team to understand her very unique medical situation.
She was born with an incompletely formed sacrum (the base of the spinal column) with abnormal openings in the bone. The covering of her spinal cord, or the meninges, pushed through one of these openings, allowing spinal fluid to collect into a growing cyst in her pelvis.
This type of cyst is called an anterior sacral meningocele (ASM). It affects only one in 100,000 people worldwide, mostly women.
