Mission Remission is a community who share stories, tips, and support to make life beyond cancer a little less scary and a lot more hopeful. Following on from the Safe Sick Pay campaign that Steve Pointon from Action Kidney Cancer was involved with, Steve was asked to share is story with Mission Remission for a series of articles and interviews that were broadcast on Saturday 10 May on BBC Radio 4. Steve’s story has now been published by The Telegraph.

Read more in The Telegraph here

If you are not able to access this article, here is Steve’s story:

I had to fight for half-pay while recovering from surgery

Steve Pointon, 45, from Crewe, experienced a problem employer when he was diagnosed with kidney cancer in 2016.

“At the time I worked for a security firm and was back to work just six weeks after my operation,” he says. “I’d had to fight to negotiate half-pay during my absence and when I came back it was full-on. There was limited opportunity for flexibility, despite the fact I’d just had major surgery.”

When his cancer returned in 2018, things took a downward turn. “I had to go to hospital for four five-day admissions for very aggressive immunotherapy treatment, which needed several weeks of recovery each time,” he says. After the initial eight weeks of treatment he was told by his healthcare team he could do “light work” but this wasn’t enough for his employer.

“I received an email in the hospital about when I was coming back. When I returned, I was called into a meeting for a dressing down about not working hard enough. They had me travelling across the UK and going for early and late meetings. I was also told off for not working over the weekends,” Pointon says.

Following the gruelling treatment he was incapable of working the long, stressful hours that his employer demanded. “I was forced to leave and go on statutory sick pay, so my finances took a huge hit,” he says. “I took legal action against my employer, which ended up being more stressful than my cancer treatment.”

Although he won the case in 2021 for breach of disability discrimination, constructive dismissal and harassment, he paid a lot of money to get to tribunal, and the emotional burden caused his mental health to decline.

Pointon has since retrained as a mental health counsellor, and now has his own counselling business – as well as working for Action Kidney Cancer and a hospice in Cheshire. While he enjoys his work now, it’s been extremely hard to get there.

“There’s no support for people to retrain after cancer, so I had to take loans and rely on family to get me through the training,” he says. “That option isn’t available to everyone and it’s a really hard path to take.

It would be great to see better support for people to retrain after serious illness.”