When police officer Kris Chown kept getting headaches he thought it was pressure of working towards promotion and his long commute from Newport to Reading.
It was only when Kris collapsed at work that he was sent for a scan and doctors discovered he had a brain tumour the size of a tennis ball.
Kris, 32, learned of his fate after receiving a telephone call at work.
He said: "I had a phone call from the doctor out of the blue. He said 'you have a brain tumour'.
"I was thinking 'Oh my God'..... I was in the middle of a meeting and had come out to take the call. I was a couple of minutes on the phone and then I went back into the meeting.”
Looking back Kris, now Sergeant Chown, realises he shouldn’t have waited until he collapsed to take his headaches seriously.
“The headaches had not been excruciating and I had put them down to lifestyle. I live in Newport but work for Thames Valley Police in Reading and was commuting to and from work on my days off.”
Kris had also been working towards, and successfully passed, the tough police exam to be promoted to sergeant and thought headaches were just part of working and studying hard.
After getting the terrible news the scans had revealed a brain tumour Kris was relieved to hear it wasn’t malignant. But he needed five rounds of brain surgery over the next 12 months, including removing a quarter of his skull bone, to successfully remove it.
“They had to take a piece of my skull away. They took the roof off and got in there,” explained Kris.
“Your brain sits in a bag of fluid and my tumour was growing out of this and got so big it attached to my brain. It was the size of a tennis ball and pressing on my brain.”
The growth was so large and entwined with Kris’s brain that surgeons had to leave a small piece behind or risk him being paralysed down the left side of his body.
And when his wound became infected Kris needed four more rounds of surgery.
Eventually, to let it heal neurologists had to remove a quarter of his skull leaving just skin over the wound while it healed for six months before replacing it with ceramic “bone”.
He recalled: “It was horrendous at the time and I could not see the end in sight. The infection in the wound just wouldn’t heal.”
Finally Kris, who is originally from Caldicot, had the all clear and in 2015 went back to work a year after the first operation.
A year later, he married his long term partner Kelly Sheppard and began an Open University degree in law . He graduated earlier this month.
“I am someone who likes to keep busy,” he added.
“I wanted to do it for myself, but was not sure what to do because it was fairly soon after I had surgery.” added Kris, who was promoted fully to sergeant in 2017.
Getting married in 2016 he and Kelly have a son Dylan, who is nearly as year old, cementing Kris’s recovery and new start at home and work.
“Kris is amazing,” added Kelly.
