WHEN student Emily Jones started being sick in the morning she put it down to a stomach complaint.

But a year later, after new symptoms such as dizziness and blurred vision developed, her world was turned upside down with the news she had a rare brain tumour.

Miss Jones, 26, a DPhil Candidate in History at Exeter College, Oxford, was just 24 when a specialist at the John Radcliffe Hospital, in Oxford, broke the news she had a large ependymoma tumour – a tumour of the central nervous system diagnosed in only about 450 people in the UK each year.

Without surgery it was not possible to tell whether the tumour was cancerous or benign.

But the procedure – a posterior fossa craniotomy – would involve an incision from the top of her head to the back of the neck and the removal of part of a vertebra. It would also carry the small risk of stroke and paralysis.

Miss Jones, from East Oxford, said: “I was only 24 and otherwise fit and healthy, and while I had just had a terrible year of feeling dreadful, sick and tired all the time, and had researched my symptoms on the internet, I had never even considered it could be a brain tumour and I was obviously devastated.”

Miss Jones had started feeling unwell at the beginning of 2011, and made repeated visits to her GP over the coming months, but was diagnosed with nothing more serious than vertigo.

She said: “Strangely enough I never had headaches, although I did develop dizziness, and in the end I could not tilt my head back or lie down flat.

“Luckily my mum, who lives in Cheshire, is a nurse and after not seeing me for a while was so shocked at how poorly I looked she suggested I ask for a referral to a specialist.”

While Miss Jones’s tumour was being removed in 2012, a biopsy revealed potentially cancerous elements and she was told she would have to undergo seven weeks of radiotherapy in September and October to radiate her whole head and spine.

She said: “I lost my hair, the steroids I took made me gain weight, and some days I was so fed up I was snappy with my mum and boyfriend Joe – but they were great.”

With her PhD status suspended while she underwent treatment, she recovered at her mum’s home in Cheshire but missed her studies and friends in Oxford and returned to the city in January this year.

She said: “It has helped to be back at work, with things going on.”

She is now having three-monthly brain scans.

Miss Jones said: “One ‘good thing that has happened is that I have learned how underfunded brain tumour research is, and I set up a JustGiving page with my story to raise awareness of the conditions.

“I asked people to donate to the charity Brain Tumour Research – which has raised £6,000.”

On November 6 Miss Jones also attended a special screening of the film Come As You Are at The Phoenix Picturehouse, in Walton Street, Oxford, for Brain Tumour Research Mr Puneet Plaha, consultant neurosurgeon at the John Radcliffe Hospital, also attended, with a question and answer session following the film.