'It was a Saturday evening and I just opened it and read it... it came as a massive shock'

A granddad whose back pain turned out to be cancer has revealed the moment he was given the news – over an email.

Mark Norris, from Beswick, first started getting symptoms back in 2022 when he developed a dull ache in his back. Believing he had “slept funny”, the 59-year-old chose to ignore the pain at first.

But when the aching persisted, the market manager decided to visit a GP who referred him for further tests.

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Sadly, one scan showed he had a cyst, then a suspicious mass, and the granddad-of-three was asked to visit hospital for a bone scan in January 2023.

A short time later, Mark was relaxing with his wife on a Saturday evening when an email popped up on his phone. It said he had received a message on his patient access app.

Tragically, that’s when the granddad learned he had renal cell cancer, the most common type of kidney cancer. “It was a Saturday evening and I just opened it up and read it,” he told the Manchester Evening News. “I said to my wife, ‘Have you seen this? Do you think they’ve made a mistake?’

“It came as a massive shock, and to receive the diagnosis via email was possibly one of the worst things about the whole situation.”

Despite the initial shock, Mark described his subsequent treatment as “amazing,” with surgeons quickly booking him in for a radical nephrectomy to remove his kidney.

Thankfully, his tumour was contained within one kidney, meaning the cancer was fully removed in the operation. “When I saw the doctor, everything moved really quickly,” he told the MEN. “The NHS were amazing.

“When I received my diagnosis, at first, it was disbelief. Then I thought, ‘Sh**’. You think about what’s going to happen to you.