An athlete and model was told she was "days away from dying" after learning she had a brain tumour that doctors had wrongly diagnosed as an ear infection.

Australian high jumper Amy Pejkovic suffered searing headaches and was "vomiting at every training session" before an MRI scan revealed the problem.

She had twice been misdiagnosed with a middle ear infection.

But the scan, a day after her 19th birthday in 2012, revealed a life-threatening 5cm tumour at the base of her brain in 2012.

“Up until that point life had been pretty cruisy for me, but at that moment everything went numb. I just went blank,” she told the Herald Sun.

The diagnosis derailed her dream of making the Australian team for the 2012 Olympics in London. She had already qualified to compete in the World Junior Championships in Barcelona that year, alongside working steadily as a model.

But Ms Pejkovic said she just felt lucky to be alive after the tumour was successfully removed.

“I was probably days away from dying, that is what [doctors] said to me,” she said.

Amy Pejkovic works as a model alongside her sporting career (Getty Images)

Two years on from her diagnosis Ms Pejkovic was ranked second in Australia at high jump, but then she suffered what she believes was delayed shock at the health ordeal.

“I was a complete mess, mentally I could not get over what had happened," she said.

But she has set her sights competing in the 2018 Commonwealth Games in her home country next year and the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo.