Student woke at night with 'really bad' arm pain - her life was then 'ripped from under her feet'

A student said her 'life was completely ripped from her under her feet' after waking up at night with a 'really bad pain' in her arm and chest then being diagnosed with an aggressive cancer.

Eloise May said she was left in 'disbelief' after being diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, the Liverpool Echo reports. The 20-year-old said she initially thought the pain was caused by a horse-riding injury or by coming home drunk.

She said 'absolutely no idea' the 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. Eloise said she couldn't believe it until she saw biopsy samples of the tumour, which looked like 'little white worms' in a pot.

READ MORE: ''I found out I had cancer when I was six months pregnant"

The third year Liverpool John Moores University 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. The social life that I did have is basically non-existent.

"I've had to defer uni. It's quite difficult because obviously I'm seeing everyone finishing their dissertations and graduating and I'm like, 'That should be me', but there's always next year."

Eloise is already more than half way through an intensive course of chemotherapy at The Clatterbridge Cancer Centre - Liverpool. Doctors hope she won't have to undergo radiotherapy if this round of treatment succeeds.

Eloise is managing to stay positive despite losing her hair, which was "the worst thing in the world".

This week, she received a text saying she'd be sent £350 from Giddo's Gift, a charity set up by the mum of Jordan Giddins, an 18-year-old from Flint who died of