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Welcome to the KCSN Summer Newsletter

Read Debbie Murphy's inspiring book about life following her diagnosis of kidney cancer. The book has had fantastic reviews and KCSN recommend it to all kidney cancer patients and families. Debbie is kindly sharing the proceeds of her book sales with our charity.

You can order Debbie’s book through Amazon: An Unfashionable Cancer

Real stories

Reading or listening to the experiences of real people whose lives have been affected by kidney cancer can help you understand more about living with the disease. Hearing about their experiences and how they coped with their diagnosis can help to alleviate some of your fears. We have a number of new patients stories and a series of videos on our website. Read patient stories here and watch our videos here. If you would like to share your story, please email us.

Read about Katy, a young mother with a very rare form of kidney cancer called MiT family translocational renal cell carcinoma, which was diagnosed soon after giving birth to her second child. Katy also took part in the Do You C Us? parliamentary campaign to raise awareness of rare and less common cancers. See Katy's video on the Do You C Us? website here.

This very powerful video blog is a poem by Ellie describing her kidney cancer journey and her fear of losing her hair. Watch Ellie's video on our Patients, in our own words website page.

Read about Scott's kidney cancer journey and how he dealt with the side effects from immunotherapy and targeted therapy. Read Scott's story on our Patient stories page on our website.

‘We need to talk about how we’re feeling’ was the theme for World Kidney Cancer Day 2021 on 17 June. This was extremely pertinent given the coronavirus pandemic and the impact of lockdown on our mental health.

World Kidney Cancer Day was a great success in raising awareness of the psychosocial issues faced by people with a diagnosis of kidney cancer, as well as their friends and families.

Our Twitter campaign reached a combined audience of over 147,000 Twitter ‘impressions’ on World Kidney Cancer Day itself, with the British Association of Urological Nurses (BAUN), The Crick Institute and The Royal Marsden Hospital, among others, all tweeting about the day.

Our World Kidney Cancer Day Facebook frame was used by many of our support group on their profile picture. This increased our reach among Facebook users and raised awareness of World Kidney Cancer Day and kidney cancer through connections made by the people who used the frame.

In June alone, the number of sessions increased 78% on our website page, whilst the number of page views increased 101%. Eighty-two percent (82%) of KCSN website users were new to the site and visitors peaked on World Kidney Cancer Day itself.

Visit our World Kidney Cancer Day website page to view our Click and Chat with Alison Manning, Person-centred Counsellor and Steve Pointon, Community Development Officer from KCSN about psychosocial help for kidney cancer patients. We also developed a psychosocial wellbeing help sheet, which describes the different types of help available and where to go to get this support. The P sychosocial Wellbeing Report remains open for those of you who would like to complete it.

World Kidney Cancer Day has not only helped to raise awareness of this devastating disease on a global basis, but has also helped to highlight the benefit of people sharing how they feel and the valuable work the KCSN does supporting patients and families with kidney cancer throughout the UK.

A big THANK YOU to everyone who took part in World Kidney Cancer Day to help raise awareness of kidney cancer and the devastating psychosocial impact it can have on patients, families and fiends.

THANK YOU for your donations!

This year has been a difficult time for fundraisers with many events being cancelled or postponed, or replaced by virtual fundraising activities. However, we are extremely grateful for the donations we receive through various platforms, such as easyfundraising, Amazon Smile and Facebook Donate. Big or small, they all make a difference.

In particular, we would like to thank Jack Swift and his cousin Phil for taking part in the Tri-Hard virtual triathlon and Steve Goldsmith and his wife Jan (above), who completed the London Summer Walk half marathon on behalf of KCSN. We would like to say a very big THANK YOU for these donations and the efforts of our virtual fundraisers, which have kept us going throughout the year.

Visit the Support Us page on our website for information about how to make a donation.

Read more about fundraising events on our website.