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pulled a muscle.
Instead an X-ray revealed a tumour the size of a football had been growing inside his body for a decade.
It was so huge his doctor dubbed it an “alien”.
The rock-hard malignant growth even had tentacles, which were pushing into his spine and ribs.
Doctors told Mr Abken the  tumour was putting pressure on his heart, pushing his lungs out of position, squashing his stomach — and endangering his life.
Mr Abken, an elementary school vice principal from California in the US said: “You think you’ve got a serious muscle pull or something, the doctor has that serious doctor face you see on TV.
“They didn’t really know what was growing inside of me.
“It kept getting bigger and bigger and nastier and nastier.”
He christened the tumour “Gill” and he and his family made T-shirts with the slogan “Kill Gill”, based on the posters for the Quentin Tarantino film, “Kill Bill”.
Mr Abken, who was 36 when he was diagnosed, said his first thought was for his two little girls who were too young to understand.
He said: “My kids are pretty young, they knew Daddy had a big ‘owee’.”
He survived thanks to his surgeon, Costanzo Di Perna, who removed the rare cancer in a long and complex operation.
Dr Di Perna said: “Trying to take out this large, calcified tumour, hard like a rock, created a difficult surgical experience.
“It’s very intimidating to see the CAT scan images and to propose a reasonable surgery without killing a 36-year-old.”
A year on, Mr Abken is still cancer-free and Dr Di Perna is teaching his pioneering surgery to doctors at the Mercy Cancer Institute, California. — Daily Mail.