College Student Fell Down Steps at School and Thought She Had a Concussion. Then, She Got a Shocking Diagnosis

NEED TO KNOW

• A woman discovered she had a brain tumor after a fall at her college led her to undergo an MRI scan

• Alice Chawner underwent multiple surgeries and treatments, but her tumor progressed to grade four with limited options left in the U.K.

• Chawner and her family are exploring immunotherapy in Germany and advocating for earlier brain tumor detection through regular scans

A college student is exploring treatment options for a brain tumor that was discovered after she fell on campus.

Alice Chawner thought she only had a concussion when she “smacked” her head, having fallen down 15 concrete steps in her residence hall at the University of Manchester.

“I got really drunk and I slipped and fell down the stairs,” said Chawner, 25, according to Kennedy News and Media. “There’s a big question mark as to whether I had a seizure at that point and that’s what made me black out.”

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Chawner didn’t go to the hospital until a medical student advised her to do so. Once she got there, she was “shocked” by the results of her MRI scan.

The college student was told she would have to undergo surgery as it was revealed that she had a low-grade glioma, which is a type of brain tumor.

“This was all a bit of a shock,” she recalled. “I didn’t even register it. I went into survival mode and thought, ‘Let’s do this.’ It was a bit daunting.”

Chawner had five surgeries between 2021 and 2024, allowing her to manage the infection and complete her college degree.

“Apart from a couple of seizures, I’ve never had any symptoms per se,” she explained. “I genuinely believe if I hadn’t found it in 2020, by now I probably would’ve had symptoms, but it would’ve been a lot longer down the road.”

In June 2025, Chawner’s tumor progressed to grade four, and a new tumor had shown up in a different part of her brain. “It was really devastating news. It was the worst news I’ve ever had,” she said. “That’s the first time I ever cried in her clinic room.”

A few months earlier, Chawner had an egg removal so she could eventually have kids, but she admits to feeling “all of it had kind of been for nothing.”

“I didn’t have to really go through the egg removal because it was like ‘Great, I’m not even going to get to the point where I’m going to have children, so why have I put myself through that?’ ” she said.

Chawner has since had 10 more cycles of emergency radiotherapy, but has used all other treatment options within the U.K. — so her family is now looking into immunotherapy vaccines in Germany if it’s not “too late.”

“I think we should be advocating for more checks and I think we need to be doing more regular scans on brains. There are so many people who find [a brain tumor] when it’s grade four and it’s too late,” she said. “I want to encourage people that, as terrifying as it may seem, it’s so important to look at these so early.

She added, “It’s something I really wish I had looked into this time last year and then I’d get a bigger choice.”

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