A woman who woke at night with a "really bad pain" in her arm and chest was diagnosed with an "aggressive" cancer that would kill her without treatment.
Eloise May, 20, initially thought the pain was caused by a horse riding injury, or by coming home drunk. She had "absolutely no idea" doctors would find a lightbulb-sized tumour in the middle of her chest, compressing almost a third of the vein returning blood from her brain to her heart.
The diagnosis of non-Hodgkin lymphoma in February left the third year Liverpool John Moores University student in "disbelief" until she saw biopsy samples of the tumour, which looked like "little white worms" in a pot. The sport and exercise student said: "My life as I knew it, being a student, living in a student house, has been completely ripped from under my feet.
