TLC star Tionne 'T-Boz' Watkins has been battling a brain tumour for the last three years.

The hip-hop star, who also suffers from sickle-cell disease, reveals she was diagnosed with a non-cancerous acoustic neuroma in 2006 after years of painful headaches prompted her to seek professional medical treatment.

Watkins was sent for a Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) scan, and medics discovered she had a tumour the size of a grapefruit on her brain.

She tells People magazine, "Because of my sickle-cell disease, I have a high tolerance for pain. By 2006, I'd had headaches for six years. I thought it was stress. But when my vision went blurry, I got an MRI."

She underwent a seven-hour operation to remove the growth in November 2006, but she almost didn't pull through after experiencing complications related to her life-threatening blood disorder.

Watkins explains, "When I awoke, I could hear and I looked normal, but then I had a sickle-cell crisis. With the pain meds and steroids, they said I kept flopping and hitting my head. They gave me IV (intravenous) fluids in order to stop it.

"After I was released (from hospital) more than a week later, the ride to my Los Angeles apartment was like vertigo to the 10th power. I had to sit up in bed for two months. They propped me up, but I kept sliding down, which made my head swell. It was so painful. At one point, fluid poured out of my nose.

"I was readmitted (to hospital). I couldn't walk or really see. I heard screeching noises. They said, 'We may have to cut you open again...' I prayed and the fluid stopped."

The setback in her recovery became so bad, Watkins was left unable to speak for months: "In rehab, I had to relearn how to walk and how to say my ABCs."

Watkins regained her speech within a year and went on to appear on U.S. TV's Celebrity Apprentice in March, keeping her diagnosis a secret from her fellow contestants even though she was still a little unsteady on her feet.

She explains, "I didn't want pity."