A 22-year-old man has been told he has less than a year to live after a stomach ache turned out to be a rare and aggressive form of kidney cancer.
Nickodemus Dacres, from Croydon, south London, has been diagnosed with stage four medullary renal cell carcinoma (RMC), one of the rarest and most aggressive forms of kidney cancer. The diagnosis came after he began experiencing extreme stomach pain and blood in his urine two years ago.
Rare cancer diagnosis
After months of tests, Nickodemus was diagnosed on February 6, 2025. Since then, he has been in and out of hospital, with his mother Donna Dacres, 59, by his side. Donna says she has been told her son's cancer is shared by only nine other people in the UK. According to the Ricky Casey Trust, the true prevalence of RMC worldwide is not known, with fewer than 400 reported cases to date.
Donna said: "As a mum, nothing prepares you for watching your child suffer knowing there is so little you can do to take the pain away. I cry every single day. When I look at my son I just can’t believe it. He was such a bubbly young man. He lights up everywhere. It is just hard for me to even go to the hospital and look at him."
Diagnosis journey
Nickodemus first suffered extreme stomach pain at work in July 2024, but didn't think much of it. When he went to the bathroom and saw blood, a colleague rushed him to A&E. After five days in hospital, he was released and returned to work. For months, he underwent tests until a scan revealed a small tumour in his right kidney. The lump grew, and in December 2024, surgeons removed the kidney and several lymph nodes for testing.
Two months later, Donna received a call telling her to bring her son to the hospital urgently, where doctors informed the family it was cancer. Donna, originally from Jamaica, said: "He was at work and he started having really bad tummy pain. They sent us to the oncology department, and I didn’t even know what that was. No one in our family is ever sick. When I asked the doctor why we were going down there he said it was stage four cancer. I was really stunned. I am from Caribbean people and it is very rare that we deal with such a disease. I was so shocked."
Treatment and fundraising
By the time it was discovered, the cancer had spread to his lymph nodes and lungs. Nickodemus was sent straight into chemotherapy, and doctors said that if this treatment didn't work, he would have less than a year to live. Despite trying every treatment offered, the cancer has since spread to his liver and bones. He has been in hospital for two months straight and is living with constant pain and severe abdominal discomfort.
Because the cancer is so rare, the targeted chemotherapy to shrink his tumours isn't routinely funded by the NHS. Donna says they have started the treatment, but it costs £8,000 every 28 days, totalling over £50,000. The family have started a GoFundMe page, which has raised more than £10,000.
Donna added: "Asking for help is one of the hardest things we have ever had to do. We have always tried to face life's challenges together as a family, but this is something we simply cannot do alone. There are only ten people in the whole of the UK who have the same cancer my son has. Less than a thousand people in the world have it."
