By Lucy Elkins
When Nicole Witts complained to her GP about excruciating headaches she was told it was sinusitis.
When, four months later, she asked why her arms were going into spasm she was told she probably had a trapped nerve.
Over the course of five months, Nicole, 37, a mother of two, saw eight different doctors who came up with a range of diagnoses - including post-natal depression - but all of them failed to spot the truth: Nicole had a brain tumour.
'We are programmed to accept what doctors tell us' By the time it was detected, in February 2008, the tumour was the size of an orange.
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Even then, doctors picked it up only because Nicole had had a massive fit and was rushed to hospital by ambulance. A brain scan revealed the tumour over her left ear.
'When the doctor told me what they'd found, I thought: "Oh God, I'm going to die",' recalls Nicole.
"I am not normally religious, but over the next few days I spent most of my time, when not in bed, in the hospital chapel.
"I was so frightened - not for me, but for my kids, wondering how they would cope without their mom."
Her daughters Megan and Ellen were then only four and eight months old
"I had suspected for some months there was something wrong with me, but the way the various doctors had repeatedly dismissed me had left me wondering if I was going mad.
"Yet despite the awful news, I was relieved to know that I hadn't been imagining it all."
With brain tumours, early diagnosis can be a matter of life and death. Around 16 000 people in the UK develop a primary brain tumour each year and around 3 500 people die as a result, often because the tumour is detected too late for it to be treated effectively.
Many of these are not cancerous - which can spread elsewhere; instead, they are benign growths that have formed around vital areas of the brain.
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