A WOMAN who survived surgery to remove a brain tumour has cleared the final hurdle to return to her old life – getting her driving licence back.

Becky Dodd, 26, was vacuuming her room one day after work in 2012, when she collapsed and only woke up some time later. After banging her head during a second seizure, she went to visit her doctor.

She said: “All I was doing was hoovering under my bed, and the next thing I knew I woke up with the Hoover on top of me.

“I didn’t think anything of it, just thought I’d just passed out but mum made me go to the doctor and he said I’d had a fit.”

Becky had scans at York Hospital, where she was diagnosed with a cyst in the central part of her brain. She was taken to Hull Royal Infirmary and scanned every three months to monitor the tumour.

Becky’s mother, Karen, said: “The position of the tumour was quite scary to operate on because if it went on growing, it would control all her movement and could have left her immobile.

“They called us back after a scan showed the tumour had slightly changed. The options were to leave it a bit longer or remove it – so she went in in June 2012.”

Becky said the tumour had gone from “about the size of a golf ball to about the size of a tennis ball”, and surgeons were not certain how it was attached to her brain.

She said: “The doctors didn’t really give odds and said it was next to the bit of my brain that does movement. It could be sitting on something, but he couldn’t say.

“The worst thing was the thought of going in and having the operation, knowing the side effects could be either coming back to normal or not knowing who or where I was or not being able to move my arms or legs.”

Since the operation, Becky has undergone regular scans which show the operation was a success, and she has since returned to her job as a cleaner at the University of York.

This week, almost a year after Becky first applied to get her driving licence back, the DVLA has returned it to her, and she said she was hugely pleased.

“It’s the last hurdle cleared now, it feels brilliant.

“Everyone got phone calls yesterday. I was crying and laughing and everything.

“I shocked my mum at first because of the laughing, but it’s great to have it back.”