Vital statistics took on a whole new meaning for model and beauty queen Kerri Parker when she suddenly had to confront rates of surgical success and survival. Rowan Mantell met her at a support group for people battling brain tumours, and their families.

It is normally her beauty that propels model Kerri Parker into the news, but right now her brain is receiving more attention.

Kerri, aged 30, is recovering from an operation to remove a brain tumour.

More used to starring on catwalks and in beauty pageants, her latest photo-shoot was at the March meeting of the Norfolk Brain Tumour Support Group.

Five days earlier surgeons were cutting a 4cm tumour from her brain. The good news is that they removed the entire tumour and she does not need immediate chemotherapy or radiotherapy. The bad news is that her type of cancerous tumour is likely to return.

The tumour growing in Kerri's brain was found by chance after she was admitted to hospital with suspected meningitis last October. It would have probably still have been growing undetected, had Kerri not been hospitalised with a virus and sent for a brain scan by a doctor concerned by her symptoms.

Now the long scar, tracking across her head, is beginning to heal and Kerri is looking forward to competing in her next beauty contest in America this summer.

She won the title of Europe's Perfect Supermodel in London, after being diagnosed, and is determined to travel to Florida to compete in the world event. She is also already fundraising for brain tumour charities.

Kerri and her mum, Kathleen, are organising a charity football match in their home town of Dereham for Sunday, May 4, in aid of brain tumour research, and it was just weeks after she learnt she had a brain tumour that Kerri celebrated her 30th birthday, with a charity ball. 'I was supposed to be in Vegas!' she laughed.

Kerri began modelling at 19 and now runs one of the UK's biggest model training schools, and a nutrition business.

She came to the support group, held every month in the Big C Centre at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, with her mum. Kathleen said: 'I didn't want to let her out of my sight to start with. It's good to have people to talk to. I have had lots of other mums contact me and it's just so helpful to hear from other people who have been in the same boat. Some have had their diagnosis too late but others have told me about getting through it.'

The support group is run by Joyce Bell of Norwich, whose daughter Jennifer was killed by an undiagnosed brain tumour in 2006.

'I first came along a couple of years after we lost Jennifer. I wanted to find out more about brain tumours although I didn't know whether it would make me feel better or worse,' said Joyce.

Jennifer had been ill for almost a year but doctors initially treated her for stress and depression. The 22-year-old gave up her job at Norwich Airport and was referred to a neurologist but before the appointment for a scan came through she had collapsed. Despite being rushed to hospital and transferred to Addenbrooke's, she could not be saved.

Joyce said: 'She didn't get the right diagnosis so she didn't get the opportunity of treatment. The eventual outcome might well have been the same, but she didn't even get appropriate pain relief.'

Joyce is keen to raise awareness of the symptoms of brain tumours – so that parents, staff in schools and colleges, and GPs are all able to recognise warning signs and act quickly.

'Hopefully some good will come out of Jennifer's experience,' said Joyce.

Her husband, Colin, had a stroke the year before Jennifer died and Joyce said: 'Because I'm a carer as well, I realise the value and importance of support groups.'

Jo Osborn, of Whissonsett, near Fakenham, was at the group with her 46-year-old daughter, Lucy, and said: 'The group has been really, really helpful for me.

'Joyce is wonderful. Her daughter had the same situation as Lucy but didn't make it. So I feel very close to her.'

Lucy, who works part-time as a shop assistant, and is also a volunteer befriender, had a tumour the size of a golf ball removed from her brain.

'They kept telling me that I was having migraines,' said Lucy, of Swaffham.

Jo said: 'She was in a flat on her own. She was so poorly. She was being sick and banging into things and losing her sight from time to time. By the time she was admitted to hospital, I don't think she would have survived many more days.'

Now Lucy is able to enjoy singing in a community choir again, and she and her mum have raised money for brain tumour research with sponsored walks and a vintage tea party.

She had an underlying health condition, but mother-of-two Cherry Smithson, now 47, had been fit and healthy. 'I was biking, walking, doing keep-fit,' she said. 'Then suddenly I felt like I was dragging my left leg along and wasn't able to talk very well.'

Doctors considered rheumatism, stress, infections or the auto-immune condition lupus before Cherry collapsed at home.

'One day I had biked home from my job as a domestic. I had changed my clothes and was getting tea but I felt funny and although I was watching Neighbours I couldn't understand what was going on and everything seemed to be shimmering like a mirage,' she said.

She did not immediately have surgery, saying: 'It was a low grade, non-cancerous, slow growing, but then it showed changes. Two years ago they took 95pc of it away. It will always grow back again but it will do so slowly, so I've got decades until I need to worry. If I have to have a brain tumour, it's a positive one!'

Cherry, who now works as a volunteer at a centre for elderly people with dementia, in Aylsham, said: 'When I first woke up after the operation I couldn't remember I had a left side and that was frightening. And because it's in your brain, it's frightening. This support group has been vital.'

For Paul Corker, diagnosis came too late and it is his bereaved mother who attends the support group.

Paul, who ran a burger van, died aged 52, three years to the day after discovering he had a brain tumour.

'He couldn't speak properly. He was mixing words up and not able to say what he wanted to say,' explained his mum, Pauline Walker, of Stratton Strawless, near Norwich. 'He was on a waiting list to have a scan, but it was quite a long list. One night he came in and said he couldn't understand what he was reading. Somehow I knew then what he had got and I knew that the prognosis wouldn't be good.

'Paul was a very big, sociable, outgoing, friendly person with a lot of personality. He had the best funeral ever!'

She too is passionate about ensuring as many people as possible know the symptoms and get earlier diagnoses.

• The Norfolk Brain Tumour Support Group meets at the Big C Centre at the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital on the first Wednesday of every month, except January, from 1.30-3.30pm. It is led by health professionals and a specialist nurse attends.

For more information about the Norfolk Brain Tumour Support Group call the Big C on 01603 286112 or the oncology nurse specialist on 01603 288112.

• Other useful information is available from The Brian Tumour Charity at www.thebraintumourcharity.org and HeadSmart at www.headsmart.org.uk or on freephone: 0808 800 0004.

Kerri and Kathleen Parker are raising money for brain tumour research with a charity football match and prize auction at Dereham Town Football Club from 1pm on Sunday, May 4. Tickets are £5 for adults and £3 for children or donate online here.