The abdominal swelling had been building for a while. So had the constipation and the weight loss. What finally sent a 53-year-old man with type 2 diabetes for imaging was a bulge that had appeared above his navel.
The hernia was the visible problem. What lay behind it was not fluid in the ordinary sense but mucin, a thick gelatinous material that had been quietly accumulating throughout his abdominal cavity for long enough to push the abdominal wall apart.
