For months Amanda Day suffered from unbearable back pain and severe migraines, which were dismissed by doctors as “growing pains”.

She was even accused of lying.

However, the teenager was later diagnosed with an incurable brain tumour, which had been overlooked countless times.

Amanda is now in sixth form studying art and design and is set on living her life to the full.

The Oasis Academy pupil also wants to raise awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours and the lack of research and funding in that area.

Amanda was 15 and studying for her GCSEs when she collapsed at school with a suspected stroke.

The Queenborough resident said: “I’d been suffering from severe migraines and crippling pain in my back but no one apart from my mum was taking me seriously.

"We attended so many medical appointments that I lost count and, even after being taken to hospital by ambulance when I collapsed, we were still dismissed.

“I had a CT scan but nothing was picked up and my double vision, shortness of breath and the unbearable back pain were blamed on ‘complex migraines’.”

Amanda said if it had not have been for her mother, Jenny, insisting on an MRI scan, she would not be here today.

“My mum remained adamant that my problems, which were increasingly debilitating and left me on the sofa for hours, days sometimes, were not caused by growing pains and migraines,” she said.

“When a doctor accused me of lying it was the final straw. It had got to the stage where I began to doubt myself.

“I could see how some people might have thought I was being a drama queen and perhaps faking it, but anyone who knew me would have understood this was not the case.”

Amanda had an MRI scan on December 22, 2013 and it showed she had a tumour on her brain stem.

Amanda said: “The news was broken to my parents in a phone call on Christmas Eve.

“We had to report to King’s College Hospital in London on Boxing Day but I wasn’t told until late on Christmas night.

“Somehow mum and dad had managed to put on a brave face and give me and my sister Rebecca a wonderful Christmas.”

Amanda went into surgery the day before New Year’s Eve.

The tumour was located at the top of her spinal column, attached to the nerves controlling her vision, breathing and consciousness.

The operation went according to plan, but Amanda developed an infection in her brain, which kept her in hospital for six weeks.

She said: “The surgery had left me completely exhausted and I had a month off to rest and recuperate before starting six weeks of radiotherapy at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London.

“My treatment was high dosage in order to target tumour cells which had diffused into my spine. After the second day I was in a wheelchair.”

Amanda took anti-sickness drugs but was still vomiting up to six times a day and she lost a stone-and-a-half.

“My life as a ‘normal’ teenager was over,” she said.

“I felt isolated and abandoned by my friends. It was painful to see on Facebook my friends were out partying and I couldn’t be a part of that.

“During my treatment I lost lots of weight and watched as my long hair and eyebrows disappeared. I felt ugly and disgusting. I had come to terms with dying but I didn’t want to be stuck in a dead-end job and I was determined to get back to school.”

Amanda, who would like to study photography at college, has to have follow-up scans every three months and has been told her tumour will grow back – but no one knows when.

She said: “I keep my hair short now. It’s my war wound and I wear it like a trophy, which makes me proud of everything I have been through.”