Dad was given months to live after doctors found tumour 'the size of a small baby'

A father was given just months to live after a cancerous tumour “the size of a small baby” was found on his kidney.

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. Two decades later, he is still here.

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.”

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.”

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. Helen explained: “He saw I was crying and said, ‘Oh, don’t worry’.

“I said, ‘What do you mean, don’t worry?’… and he said, ‘I don’t feel like I’m dying. I’ll worry when I feel like I’m dying’.