Kit Thomson was diagnosed with a 17cm cancerous tumour after his symptoms were initially dismissed as being an infection. The nine-year-old's parents, Johnny Agnew and Alice Warren, noticed he looked paler than usual around December 2024 but attributed it to their Scottish heritage.
Symptoms Initially Dismissed
The schoolboy also had a puffy stomach, which the couple assumed was bloating. A doctor initially reassured them it was a urine tract infection. However, when Kit's family discovered blood in his urine and the lump on his stomach grew bigger, they changed GP and pushed for a second opinion. An ultrasound and an MRI in February 2025 revealed the boy was suffering from a kidney cancer called Wilms tumour.
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.”
He added: “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.”
Treatment and Relapse
Kit underwent two rounds of gruelling chemotherapy as well as surgery. Despite finishing first-line treatment last October, he relapsed in January. He then began a new course involving stronger chemotherapy, longer hospital stays, a stem cell transplant and radiotherapy, which finished on 9 July. 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 toxicity of treatment.
Johnny said: “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. When you go through treatment, you've got a plan and you're following it the best you can. Now we’re into uncharted territory, and you can't really plan for the future at all.”
Despite the ordeal, Kit remains upbeat. Johnny added: “He comes home from the hospital and acts like nothing has ever happened. Most of the time he’s been really upbeat, happy, energetic.”
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.
