The family of a schoolboy have been left devastated after he was diagnosed with cancer following a minor fall in a park.
Reid Scanlon, 5, was spending the day with a childminder in Cardiff when he started to feel a pain in his stomach following the fall.
His mum, Alison, made the decision to take the boy to hospital for tests after the stomach pain persisted and said she “just couldn’t believe” what the doctors told her.
“They just broke the news that they'd found a mass on Reid's left kidney, quite big in size,” Scanlon told Sky News.
Reid Scanlon was diagnosed with a form of kidney cancer
Alison Scanlon
“They were quite worried about it.”
The mum from Tonteg in Pontypridd continued: “We just looked at Reid and we just couldn't believe it. It didn't sink in, we were just crying and so upset.”
Reid was diagnosed with a type of kidney cancer called a Wilms’ tumour.
According to Cancer Research UK, around 80 children are diagnosed with this type of cancer every year.
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Reid Scanlon in hospital
Reid Scanlon
Scanlon described the diagnosis as even more baffling given “he was doing WWE wrestling with his brother, jumping off the pouffe” just one day prior.
She continued that had he not fallen, the cancer may have never been discovered.
“There was just absolutely no signs at all,” the mum said, “Nothing. He was bright, happy, cheerful.
“What they'd said was, where he'd fallen, it caused the mass to bleed and that's why he was in so much pain.
“So if he hadn't have fallen, probably today we'd be none the wiser until a few months down the line it would have started showing out of his stomach.”
According to NHS Inform, Scotland’s national health information service, Wilms’ tumour has a one in 20 chance to affect both kidneys at the same time.
Jill Desmond, the cousin of Scanlon, set up a GoFundMe page to help raise money for the five-year-old’s treatment.
Scanlon thanked those who have already donated and sent messages to Reid, adding the kindness of strangers “just blows you away”.
She added: “You can't comprehend. One day, he's just a fit and healthy little boy playing and then the following day you get told he's got cancer.”
