A WOMAN who had a section of her skull removed and implanted into her stomach to avoid brain damage has returned home.

Nicki Peach, 26, came back to Mansfield Hill, Chingford, after a two-year journey to recovery involving life-saving surgery and rehabilitative treatment .

The former office worker's ordeal began when she was on holiday in Gran Canaria in 2004. As she climbed over a fence to get into her holiday apartment, she fell on to the concrete and smashed in the side of her skull.

For three weeks she lay in a hospital in Las Palmas and surgeons were convinced she would die if she did not receive surgery.

To cope with the injury, her brain had to be allowed to swell beyond its normal size.

Surgeons carried out a procedure known as a decompressive hemicraniectomy, removing part of her skull and implanting it into her stomach to preserve the bone.

Ms Peach said: "It is really a miracle I am here considering how serious my injury was. I just can't wait to get back to normality as much as possible."

After her skull was re-attached at the Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London, she was transferred to the Royal Hospital for Neuro-Disability in Putney.

On arrival she was bedbound, unable to communicate and able only to make slight movements with her right arm.

Ms Peach underwent 18 months of gruelling treatment which included speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, hydrotherapy and music therapy and on Friday she walked out of the unit with the help of a stick, heading home to begin living with her parents and boyfriend in Chingford.

She said: "It has been a long, slow climb back to normality. I have been determined to get better. It has taken me a long time and a lot of work but now I can walk again. My main aim,was to walk out of here and I did that last Friday."

Nicki attended the launch of the hospital's Stepping Stones appeal. It aims to raise £400,000 to build an extension to its transitional living unit, so more people can benefit from the specialist care she received during her time there.