Devastation after mum-of-three's 'really bad anxiety' turned out to be deadly condition

A mum-of-three who was told she had ‘really bad anxiety’ was actually suffering from a potentially deadly brain tumour.

Police officer Emma Capper says she felt unwell for weeks but struggled to get a face-to-face doctor’s appointment. The 39-year-old was finding it hard to turn her head and felt “unsteady” on her feet.

After eventually visiting medics, she was diagnosed her with anxiety and given beta blockers for high blood pressure. Emma, from Oldham, says she was also prescribed anti-sickness medication for dizziness over the phone.

But when her symptoms worsened and she began throwing up, Emma decided to to bypass her GP and go straight to an emergency ward. Doctors there finally invited her for a head scan which revealed she had a “large growth" at the back of her head - later shown to be cancerous.

READ MORE: Deborah James' final 'check your poo' warning and the bowel cancer symptoms to look out for'

Emma was then rushed to a specialist hospital where surgeons successfully removed the tumour eight days later. Now the mum believes she may have suffered for months if she’d accepted her local clinic’s diagnosis and needs new tests to see if the cancer has spread.

She said: “If I’d not gone to A&E that day, I’d still be walking around feeling as unwell. I don’t know how I was managing going to work every day. Up until my head was scanned, it was not possible to know if it was there or not.

“Unless the doctors were going to have referred me for a scan, this was never going to have ended. Speaking to the doctors in hospital, the next thing was seizures. I’ve now had to give my driving license up as I’m not considered as being safe to be able to drive.”

Emma said that she first rung her clinic in Oldham on May 11