Kit Thomson, nine, was diagnosed with a 17cm cancerous tumour after his symptoms were initially dismissed as an infection. Parents Johnny Agnew and Alice Warren first noticed he looked paler than usual around December 2024 but put his pasty complexion down to their Scottish heritage.
Initial symptoms dismissed
Kit also had a puffy stomach which the couple assumed was bloating, before a doctor reassured them it was just a urine tract infection. But when the youngster discovered he had blood in his urine and the lump on his stomach grew bigger, his parents changed GP and pushed for a second opinion.
An ultrasound and an MRI in February 2025 revealed the boy was actually suffering from a kidney cancer called Wilms tumour. Kit has since undergone two rounds of gruelling chemotherapy as well as surgery.
Father's account
Dad Johnny, 40, of Spittalfield, Perthshire, said: 'He had been looking a bit pale but at the time he's a little guy and quite thin. It was winter, he's a Scottish boy in winter, so they are pale and you don't think anything of it. It'd be hard to tell the difference.'
'It wasn't enough of a symptom to go to the doctor. Cancer is fairly asymptomatic and he was behaving normally, he was chatty. The next signs we noticed were blood in his urine. That's an alarming thing for a parent, but you don't immediately think it's cancer.'
'We went to the GP, who said it was an infection, but then we noticed he was losing weight. Then, soon after, we noticed he had a puffy tummy and shockingly quickly after that you could actually see the tumour sticking out his tummy. Within a month, it was sticking out of his tummy. It came from nothing.'
Wilms tumour diagnosis
Wilms tumor, also known as nephroblastoma, is the most common type of kidney cancer in children, according to The Children & Young People's Cancer Association. Common symptoms include a painless abdominal mass or swelling and it usually affects children aged up to five years old.
Kit needed immediate chemotherapy, which was followed by surgery and more chemo, and spent most of his first six weeks of treatment in hospital. Despite finishing this first-line treatment last October, he relapsed in January. He began a new course of treatment involving stronger chemotherapy, longer hospital stays, a stem cell transplant and radiotherapy, which finished on 9 July.
Ongoing care and fundraising
Kit will now undergo regular scans and tests to check for any remaining cancer, while he'll also need lifelong heart, liver and kidney health checks due to the toxicity of treatment.
Johnny added: 'Having to go through it again was really hard. There's huge relief in getting through treatment, but this next stage of post-treatment scans is a scary period. We've already been through one round of treatment and finding out his cancer never really went away was horrendous.'
Johnny is now taking on the Scottish Half Marathon to raise funds for Kit's Fund, a Special Named Fund at CCLG: The Children & Young People's Cancer Association. The family have already raised almost £5,000.
