Childhood Cancer Awareness Month

[Tommy Fresh]

I don't feel this gets enough attention, but every September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which aims to raise awareness of childhood cancer in general, but also support for children and families who are suffering or have suffered from a child with cancer.

 

As a few on here may remember, my 2 year old son was diagnosed with stage 4 high risk Neuroblastoma back in June 2022, he finished treatment in January 2024 and has thankfully remained disease free since 

 

When he was first diagnosed we were fobbed off numerous times by GPs, A & E etc, and one thing our oncology consultant said to us was most GPs won't ever come across childhood cancer in their entire careers, it's obviously a horrible thought but if you feel something is off with your child it's definitely worth pushing, if we hadn't the outcome would have likely been very different. 

 

Research in to childhood cancer is also massively underfunded, and the list of potential lifelong side effects from the treatment is ridiculous, from potentially causing secondary cancers, heart conditions to growth issues and infertility.

 

In our sons case in particular, a number of the drugs used were introduced decades ago, which if the survival rate was ridiculously high you could understand, but at diagnosis we were told the 5 year survival rate was around 40-50%.

 

Also want to give a big shout out to all the paediatric oncology staff at LRI who were and still are absolutely superb, all the consultants, nurses and health care staff were unbelievably amazing especially with our son, as were all those involved at QMC and Sheffield Children's Hospital.

[Tommy G]

20 minutes ago, Tommy Fresh said:

I don't feel this gets enough attention, but every September is Childhood Cancer Awareness Month, which aims to raise awareness of childhood cancer in general, but also support for children and families who are suffering or have suffered from a child with cancer.

 

As a few on here may remember, my 2 year old son was diagnosed with stage 4 high risk Neuroblastoma back in June 2022, he finished treatment in January 2024 and has thankfully remained disease free since 

 

When he was first diagnosed we were fobbed off numerous times by GPs, A & E etc, and one thing our oncology consultant said to us was most GPs won't ever come across childhood cancer in their entire careers, it's obviously a horrible thought but if you feel something is off with your child it's definitely worth pushing, if we hadn't the outcome would have likely been very different. 

 

Research in to childhood cancer is also massively underfunded, and the list of potential lifelong side effects from the treatment is ridiculous, from potentially causing secondary cancers, heart conditions to growth issues and infertility.

 

In our sons case in particular, a number of the drugs used were introduced decades ago, which if the survival rate was ridiculously high you could understand, but at diagnosis we were told the 5 year survival rate was around 40-50%.

 

Also want to give a big shout out to all the paediatric oncology staff at LRI who were and still are absolutely superb, all the consultants, nurses and health care staff were unbelievably amazing especially with our son, as were all those involved at QMC and Sheffield Children's Hospital.

What a difficult 18 months you would of gone through as a family - and thanks for raising this for awareness purposes. Cancer is a terrible disease and even more challenging and emotive when involving children. I hope your son continues to thrive and remains cancer free.

[Tommy Fresh]

Also to add a couple of very good charities:

Young Lives vs Cancer 

https://www.younglivesvscancer.org.uk/

Pasic

https://www.pasic.org.uk/

 

[Tommy Fresh]

On 11/09/2025 at 09:52, Tommy G said:

What a difficult 18 months you would of gone through as a family - and thanks for raising this for awareness purposes. Cancer is a terrible disease and even more challenging and emotive when involving children. I hope your son continues to thrive and remains cancer free.

Thanks brother, we're obviously very grateful to get to this point after he was initially diagnosed, unfortunately though we met a lot of families who weren't as fortunate.