A brave pageant queen is competing to be crowned Miss England despite surgeons carving her ‘infected’ head open five times to battle a deadly brain tumour. Holly Worswick hit the headlines after a routine eye check revealed a grapefruit-sized mass on her brain.
She claimed her GP blamed symptoms on her contraceptive pill. Surgeons removed it three days later, but the 26-year-old has since battled skull infections and the benign tumour regrowing ‘to the size of a grape’ twice in the past two years.
Despite five brain surgeries and proton beam radiotherapy, Holly still lives with the worrying mass near her ear canal and is currently suffering with an infection, which she fears may affect her balance on the catwalk. Shocking images show the dramatic head scarring and inflammation she’s battled with since her first surgery.
The pageant queen represented Cheshire at Miss International UK 2018, but her health struggles have since put her passion on the backburner. She hass announced her return for the Miss Cheshire Final on March 8, with the hope of scooping the title and slugging it out for the national title later this year.
The PE teacher admits she is nervous people will notice marks from her gruelling operations, but hopes competing will restore her confidence and raise awareness of brain tumours. Holly, from Warrington, Cheshire, said: “I was fearless in 2018 but because of the surgeries I’d had I feel like it’s really obvious when you look at me. People say it’s not obvious but I feel more self-conscious than I did previously which is making me more nervous for this one.
“I represented Cheshire when I was younger, so hopefully I can finish what I’ve started. The tumour is now in my ear canal so it keeps leaking, it’s itchy and it keeps popping like I’m on a plane all the time. My balance is very off so I’m slightly worried about that in the run up to the final because I fall over in trainers and I’ll be in heels.
“It’s because of my ear but my balance hasn’t been great since the first surgery anyway. This isn’t exactly the run-up I wanted and I don’t feel great but it’s not like I’ve had surgery again and I’m learning to walk. I’ve had to switch my mindset from waiting until everything is okay again to getting on with things.
“I’ve come to terms with the fact that something like an infection might happen so I’m being positive but I’m more realistic now. This has given me another purpose to raise awareness and (that) Miss England isn’t all about looks. In schools they don’t cover anything about brain tumours and I’m trying to get my story out there and raise awareness.”
Holly, who now lives in Macclesfield, previously claimed her complaints of vision loss headaches were brushed off by her GP as side effects of the contraceptive pill. A Specsavers appointment in February 2021 worried opticians, so she had a CT and MRI scan later that day that revealed a benign tumour.
Despite surgeons successfully extracting the mass, she was readmitted a month later as the flap of skull removed during surgery became infected. A third operation in July 2021 saw medics insert a metal plate to cover the gap in her skull that had left her with a visible dent in her head.
Holly said: “I was getting a lot of headaches and I always thought it was because I didn’t drink enough [water], but then I started getting really bad blurred vision. I’d be driving and my sight would just go. I thought, ‘this isn’t normal’, so I went to the doctors and they just thought it was to do with the pill I was on.
“I’m not a doctor so I don’t know what they could have done, but they didn’t even look into it, which is a bit ridiculous, to be honest. Luckily, I was due for a check-up at Specsavers a few days later, so when they took pictures of the back of my eye they found the optic nerves were four times the size they should be.
“The optician gave me a letter and said I need to go to A&E now and get a CT and MRI scan. They told me about the mass later that day. The surgeon said it’s been growing for 10 years.1-2mm per year, like a ticking time bomb. So it would have just kept on growing if the opticians didn’t recognise it. We even got them flowers afterwards.
“That routine check-up at Specsavers saved my life. Without them, I wouldn’t have found the tumour, so that shows it’s important not to miss your eye appointment. If you keep getting headaches that are quite severe to the point where you can’t do anything, you need to get that checked out. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”
An MRI scan in November 2022 showed the tumour had regrown, so she had her fourth surgery in January to remove it. She was given the devastating news that it had returned in November 2023 so she underwent a fifth surgery in February 2024. She began targeted proton beam therapy in July last year and is now suffering with another skull infection and issues with her ear due to the tumour’s new position.
Holly says the Miss Cheshire Final is scored on skills such as confidence, posture, and even communication when being interviewed. You can vote for Holly through the Miss England website, here – https://www.missengland.info/qualifiers/manchester/%23tab-info