Fight Bladder Cancer

Fight Bladder Cancer started from a very personal battle. Andrew, one of our founders, was diagnosed with a Stage 4, G3 bladder cancer in summer 2009. He had been experiencing symptoms for over 18 months but was misdiagnosed with an enlarged prostate. Faced with a poor prognosis and immediate life-changing surgery, Andrew and his wife T made contact with a fellow bladder cancer patient and his partner who had recently undergone the same treatment.

Just being able to talk to someone else who really understood what they were both going through helped them immensely. It also helped that the two spouses could chat about what could be expected during surgery and recovery. It was these snippets of real information that made a difference in those early days. Despite the fact that bladder cancer was so common, they were amazed to find out that most people knew nothing about it, and there wasn’t a dedicated bladder cancer charity in the UK.

Once Andrew was recovering from his surgery, they started the process of setting up what was to become the charity Fight Bladder Cancer.

From its beginnings as a local bladder cancer support group, it soon became clear that the lack of available support for patients and their families was in fact a national problem, and needed to be tackled on a much wider scale. With a team of trustees on board, the charity set up an online support forum for people the length and breadth of the country. This encouraged people to engage with others affected by bladder cancer honestly and openly, and the group quickly grew.

Following the success of the national support group, Fight Bladder Cancer started to focus on social media to campaign for better bladder cancer awareness. With over 4,000 members on the Confidential Forum and Twitter, including many leading urologists, oncologists, specialist nurses and researchers, the charity is making a difference on a national scale. The last piece of the puzzle was this website, launched in 2013, which currently receives over 200,000 unique visitors a year.

We want everyone affected by bladder cancer – patients, carers, family and friends – to have a place to come to for support, information and advice.