A Michigan teenager recently came face to face with the doctor who operated on him before he was born.
Mason Ellinger, 18, and his family traveled from Michigan to San Francisco to meet Dr. Hanmin Lee, the surgeon in chief at UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital who performed a groundbreaking procedure on Mason while he was still in the womb, ABC7 reported. Doctors had detected a hole in Mason’s diaphragm during pregnancy, a condition known as congenital diaphragmatic hernia that was displacing his organs into the chest cavity and blocking normal lung development.
Physicians in Michigan gave the Ellinger family no hope for Mason’s survival, according to ABC7. A UCSF trainee working in the state learned of the case and pointed the family toward San Francisco, where doctors had pioneered a complex two-step fetal intervention. (RELATED: ‘Just Kept Fighting’: One-Year-Old Iowa Baby Breaks World Record)
The procedure involved threading a tiny scope into the uterus and placing a small balloon inside the fetal trachea to promote lung growth, ABC7 reported. Dr. Lee removed the balloon four weeks later, saving Mason’s life before birth. UCSF was the first institution in the world to perform the operation. The technique is known as a fetoscopic endoluminal tracheal occlusion (FETO), according to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.
It’s a full circle moment for a patient and the doctor he met before anyone else. “I’m grateful that I’m here standing,” said 18-year-old Mason Ellinger. https://t.co/OPdEnsf6Bm pic.twitter.com/G6ze9gI0ge
— ABC7 News (@abc7newsbayarea) April 3, 2026
“I’m actually glad I got to meet you after all these years. It is shocking. All this happened when I was born. I couldn’t remember anything. Now, I’m grateful that I’m here standing,” Mason told ABC7.
His father Travis recalled the agonizing decision.
“Is this the right thing to do? Is it not the right thing to do if it is the right thing to do? How are we going to even make this happen? We live across the other side of the country,” he told the outlet.
Mason and Dr. Lee joked that they first spoke inside the womb. “Yes, it’s true. I told him, ‘you get better,’” Dr. Lee told ABC7.
Mason’s younger sister Isabel said his story pushed her toward a career helping children. “Seeing the struggles that he had and my parents had just kind of inspired me to go into another field that I can help a lot of more kids like him,” she told the outlet.