When Katie-Jo Bartlett looked down at her GCSE exam paper in June 2022 she saw colours dancing across the page.

Months earlier, she visited her GP and described the issues she’d been having with eyesight, as well as symptoms of nausea, back pain and struggling to walk straight.

But the teen, from Newcastle, claims her problems were dismissed, with medics telling her she was experiencing common teenage exam stress.

A day after she’d struggled through that exam, Katie-Jo, now 19, collapsed in a toilet, and was blue-lighted to Northumbria Specialist Emergency Care Hospital, in Cramlington, Northumberland.

From there, she was given deverstating diagnosis of a brain tumour, which doctors have been unable to remove. Katie-Jo was ‘terrified’ by the news.

‘Being so young, I didn’t know what having a brain tumour meant for me,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me.’

Doctors diagnosed Katie-Jo with severe hydrocephalus – an abnormal build-up of fluid in the brain – and she was rushed to Royal Victoria Infirmary, Newcastle, to drain it.

A subsequent MRI and CT scan showed that Katie-Jo had a brain tumour which was causing the leak.

Since then, Katie-Jo has had multiple surgeries to secure a shunt (a piece of thin tube) to relieve the pressure on the brain.

Sadly, her tumour can’t be removed, but the teenager undergoes MRI scans every eight months to monitor for growth, and is suffering from fatigue as a result of her shunt.

Katie-Jo, who now works in retail, said: ‘I was in the middle of my GCSE exam, looking at my paper. There were colours all over the page, and I started feeling sick.

‘Before that, I would notice that when I walked, I’d walk like a drunk person and lean to one side and never be able to walk straight.

‘I would get awful pain in my back, but everyone thought it was GCSE stress and said I needed vitamins.’

A day after her exam, in June 2022, Katie-Jos’ mum, Stacey, 43, had a doctor’s appointment, so she went along with her. While her mum was with the doctor, Katie-Jo went to the toilet and collapsed.

‘Nobody could get in,’ Katie-Jo recalled. ‘Around 25 minutes later, I came back around, and there were lots of people around us.’

Speaking of her treatment to drain the fluid which was later found, she added: ‘The doctors told me that if I didn’t have that surgery there and then, I wouldn’t be here.

‘My mum and I were so scared, but we wanted me to be better, so I went in for it as my mum promised she would never leave my side.’

She had an operation, which confirmed that the tumour was benign, and on her prom night, she had a permanent shunt installed to relieve the pressure on the brain.

Katie-Jo said: ‘Due to the location, they weren’t able to remove the tumour, but they told me it was benign. I will live with the tumour forever.

‘I have scans every eight months to monitor for any growth. I will forever be grateful to the doctors for fixing me and for basically saving my life.

‘Although it is still there and it is going to be for the rest of my life, it’s stable.’

Shannon Winslade, head of services at The Brain Tumour Charity, said: ‘We’re really grateful to everyone who shares their – often heart-breaking – story to raise awareness of brain tumours.

‘We know that every family deals with a brain tumour diagnosis and its aftermath in their own unique way.

‘That’s why The Brain Tumour Charity offers support to anyone who needs it. It’s so important for them to know that they are not alone.

‘You can find out more about our specialist teams by calling our Support and Information Line on 0808 800 0004 or via our website.’

A doctor thought my brain tumour was heatstroke

Like Katie-Jo, Moli Morgan, 22 from Powys in Wales said medics failed to recognise symptoms of a brain tumour at first.

The farmer, from Llanerfyl, had a life-threatening 4cm brain tumour on the left side of her head, but was innitially told her symptoms sounded like heatstroke when she suffered a seizure on holiday.

‘My boyfriend called the medics and they had a doctor on site at the hotel who told me it was probably just heatstroke,’ she recalled.

‘We had been in the sun all day and I hadn’t drank much water, so I sort of thought nothing more of it and we flew home the next evening.’

Following her sister’s advice to ‘be on the safe side’, she went to the hospital for a check-up once she returned to the UK. A CT and MRI scan at Royal Shrewsbury Hospital revealed the tumour.

‘I do get a couple of migraines a year, but obviously that can be normal. It just came as such a massive shock,’ she said.