Personal trainer Megan Johnson spent years wondering what was going on with her engorged belly that gave the impression of pregnancy.
From the city of Chattanooga, the 28-year-old self-diagnosed her mysterious condition through fear of medical expenses and associations of dismissal from doctors of the past.
Content with doing her own online research - all while suffering increasingly stark side effects - Megan believed she'd uncovered the root cause of her uncomfortable symptoms.
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Enter diastasis recti, which is the official term for an increased gap between the right and left abdominal muscles.
In Megan's case, she'd overextended while lifting weights in the gym and continued to work on strengthening her core even through hernias.
"My stomach was getting bigger and just wider," she told PEOPLE.
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Two years after first noticing some slight changes in her physicality, the fitness trainer experienced painful periods and bloating across her stomach region. Her belly button even changed from an innie to an outie.
Having discovered the diastasis recti phenomenon, Megan's determination to manage this issue herself meant she actively avoided seeing a doctor.
Less than a year later, she'd gained over 10 pounds and couldn't fit into her clothes, despite eating healthy and training well.
"Feeling like I'm not able to help myself makes me feel unqualified to help other people," she conceded. "It was definitely something that knocked my confidence a lot."
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Skip to April 2025 and she used the social media platform TikTok to gather some outside perspectives.
"It was insane. This army of women came to my rescue, you know, saying, 'This is exactly what I experienced. You look like me whenever I had that,'" Megan recalled. "So once I got confirmation from other people, it gave me the confidence to be like, okay, you know what? This actually might be a bigger issue than I thought. I'm gonna go get it checked out."
Tests and scans confirmed her initial diastasis recti diagnosis, but doctors also revealed to Megan that she'd been growing an ovarian cyst the size of a newborn baby (approximately 48 centimeters).
"I have some satisfaction... because I know that the thing that I've been dealing with for the past four years, that I thought I would be struggling with for the rest of my life, there's a solution, and, like, one day I won't have to struggle with it," she told PEOPLE.
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Cut to May 22 and Megan successfully had an operation to drain 27 pounds of fluid out of her body.
In the process, the surgeon was forced to remove one of her ovaries and a fallopian tube, which she was prepared for.
By sharing her story, the PT is hopeful that others will learn from it and seek out professional help if they're in a similarly vague health situation.
"Don't suffer in silence," Megan noted.
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"Don't just sit back and hide your shame or embarrassment about what's going on with your body because most people are doing the best that they can, and we can't help it."
Dan Seddon