A father given just months to live after a cancerous tumour “the size of a small baby” was found on his kidney is celebrating two decades since his diagnosis. Quentin Webb, 66, who lives with his wife Helen, 61, in Rickmansworth, Hertfordshire, was diagnosed with advanced kidney cancer in October 2006, aged 46, when their son Oakley was just two years old.
He had experienced symptoms of tiredness and weight loss, but attributed this to general life stresses – before doctors discovered a tumour on his left kidney, which weighed 3.5lbs (1.5kg). Quentin, a Scout leader and former international Dragon Boat racer, then learned the cancer had spread to his lungs and was given a prognosis of eight to 12 months, before he had the tumour and his kidney removed.
Pioneering treatment at The Christie
With other treatment options limited at the time, Helen started researching alternatives and spoke with his medical team and he ended up receiving an early form of immunotherapy at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust. The Christie said Quentin was one of the first patients to receive the high-dose immunotherapy called Interleukin-2 (IL-2), when the treatment was in its infancy, ultimately putting him into remission.
Now, celebrating two decades post-diagnosis, Quentin said: “Just being able to carry on doing what I’m doing, and not have some grisly ending, is exciting. I never accepted that I was going to die – and here we are.” Helen added: “The Christie grew our seed of family life into a tree of happiness.”
From benign symptoms to diagnosis
Quentin had always been “fit and active” prior to his diagnosis and enjoyed sailing and climbing. In September 2005 he started experiencing symptoms of tiredness and weight loss, along with an enlarged testicle, but he did not suspect anything serious.
“You just think, ‘Oh, bless, he’s getting older’, and it’s only when he’s literally falling asleep in his dinner that you think, ‘This is not normal’,” Helen said. The couple said Quentin’s “benign” symptoms meant doctors did not arrange for blood or urine tests at the time and when they scanned his testes they “found nothing”. In April 2006, the couple decided to pay privately for a second opinion, but they said Quentin was told it was a varicocele – enlarged veins in the scrotum.
“The reason he had this varicocele was because of the size of the tumour,” Helen said. “This was the weight of the tumour, which was about the size of a small baby, pressing down, so when the doctor took the vein out, needless to say, nothing got better, it got worse.”
Living life to the max
After speaking to Helen’s sister, who is a doctor, she advised the couple to push for blood and urea and electrolytes tests. This led to Quentin’s kidney cancer diagnosis in October 2006 – and while Helen was “tearful”, Quentin said he was glad to finally have answers. Days later, however, he learned the cancer had spread to his lungs and he was told he had eight to 12 months to live.
Quentin had the tumour, his left kidney and his left adrenal gland removed and Helen said doctors had to “break his ribs to get (the tumour) out”. However, since his diagnosis was advanced at this stage, they were told there was “nothing (doctors) could do”. With their son Oakley just two at the time, the couple wanted to “live life to the max” and decided to go sailing in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) in the Caribbean – Quentin’s “bucket list trip of a lifetime” – in June 2007.
Helen then started doing her own research for alternative treatments and she came across Interleukin-2, which she said was being used in America and Canada at the time. After speaking to Quentin’s medical team and contacting a doctor in America who agreed to offer this treatment, the couple made plans to travel there to boost Quentin’s chances of survival. However, before this could happen, it was revealed clinicians at The Christie in Manchester were pioneering the use of high-dose IL-2 therapy.
The Christie said it was one of the only hospitals in Europe offering this early form of immunotherapy – and after the first treatment in July 2007, Quentin said his chances of survival increased from 2% to 5%. “There were hundreds of cancer spots scattered through my lungs… and my thinking was, ‘This is my only chance’, because it wasn’t a given that it was going to fix me,” Quentin said.
In remission and celebrating milestones
After the IL-2 treatment ended in August 2008, which caused some “toxic” side effects such as flaking skin, Quentin later had both lungs resected to remove as many remaining cancerous spots as possible. In 2015, doctors found cancer in Quentin’s right adrenal gland, which was removed, and this means he is now an Addison’s patient and needs steroids for life – but the IL-2 treatment ultimately placed him in remission.
The couple have since raised funds for The Christie Charity, raising £50,000 in total, and Quentin “never does anything by halves”, as he is still sailing, climbing and scouting. He now has check-ups bi-annually to aid with research at The Christie and the family has been on holidays and celebrated several milestones, such as Oakley progressing through school and university.
Quentin said having a positive mindset has helped him through his most challenging times and the couple would advise others to ask for a second opinion if options are running out and to always “have hope”. Helen said: “There was one point before we’d found the Interleukin-2, where I was reflecting, and I said to Quent, ‘I just want you to see him start school’, and Quent said, ‘Well, I want to see him start secondary school’.
“I just thought we had no hope of that, no hope whatsoever, so there are moments now where you think, ‘Wow, we are so lucky, so fortunate’. Celebrating 20 years is a real landmark and it does make you think, Oakley’s now grown up and we do just have an absolutely normal life – and that is against all the odds.”
