Johnny Ruffo said it was ‘the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt’

THE former X-Factor contestant’s surgeon said if he’d gone to sleep that night he’d have had a brain aneurysm and never woken up.

ALL Johnny Ruffo can remember is being on the couch at home, thrashing about with a severe headache and then waking up three days later with 27 staples, a tube and a bag of brain fluid coming out of his head.

The musician and X-Factor star has sat down for his first interview to open up about his big unexpected health scare with Fitzy & Wippa.

The 29-year-old told the radio hosts he’d been getting headaches for years but, “put it down to drinking too much.”

He said it was a normal Sunday afternoon and he had, “this really bad headache” so he headed to the doctor who gave him some medication which “didn’t do anything”.

Ruffo was lying on the couch, his head absolutely throbbing. He said, “It felt like there was a fire inside”.

“I tried to talk to the missus and I slurred all my words and mixed them all up.”

Ruffo’s girlfriend, Tahnee Sims, decided it was time to go to emergency.

The hospital initially though he had a migraine so they put him on a drip, but he, “still wasn’t feeling great.”

“It was unbelievable, like the most excruciating pain I’ve ever felt. I can’t even describe it.”

“They put me on some medication and you know, I sat up and I vomited. It just wasn’t great.”

The hospital sent Sims home for the night so they could try and get Ruffo’s fluids up but things took a turn for the worst.

Ruffo had slowly started slipping into a coma overnight and the hospital staff were unable to wake him up.

At 8am the next morning Sims got a call from the emergency department saying, “you need to get down here immediately because he’s got a brain tumour.”

In “absolute tears” Sims headed to the hospital to sign a permission form for him to have emergency surgery.

The surgeon told her he had a 1 in 20 chance of dying from the operation.

The rare tumour was a 7cm malignant stage three oligodendroglioma which affects only 3% of brain tumour patients.

The neurosurgeon, who Ruffo said was “incredible” could only remove 95% of the tumour as the other 5% was too close to nerves.

The neurosurgeon said to Ruffo, “It’s one in ten years that we see something like this.”

He told him, “If you’d have gone to sleep that night you would have had a brain aneurysm and not woken up at all.”

The singer said if they had attempted to operate, “they could potentially have caused paralysis down the left side of my body.”

To try and remove the remaining 5 per cent, Ruffo is currently in the midst of radiotherapy treatment. Once that’s finished he’ll have a four week break and then start chemotherapy for six months.

“Every month you do five days on, 23 days off.”

He said, “I seem to be fairly okay.”

Making a conscious effort to remain positive Ruffo said, “It’s just sheer chance. Maybe I’ve gotten it because I’m somebody that can deal with it and can handle it … it is what it is.”

Sharing his journey on Instagram he said, “Everyone’s being extremely supportive which is really overwhelming.”

“There’s a lot more support out there than what I had thought initially; so many people have reached out and I’ve had hundreds if not thousands of people reach out”.

Ruffo’s doctors will monitor his progress throughout the treatment but he said even though they can’t say for certain, “They’re fairly confident we can beat this thing.”