'We spotted our girl had a limp - then docs said she wouldn't survive the year'

Soul artist Kenny Thomas, famed for his 90s hits like Thinking About Your Love, has drawn inspiration from his daughter Christina's courageous fight against brain cancer for his latest album, Unstoppable, his first in 15 years. In a heart-wrenching revelation back in February 2017, Christina, then only four years old, was diagnosed with an incurable and inoperable mid-brain glioma.

"We were told in no uncertain terms that she wouldn't see out that year," said Kenny, 56. The alarming diagnosis came after Kenny and his wife Francisca observed an odd limp in Christina's right leg after a family day spent on the trampoline in late October 2016.

Initially suspecting a minor injury, they sought an X-ray of her hip, which "but that flagged up nothing".

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"It was that doctor that said: 'I think this points to something neurological'," Kenny, who has two daughters and two sons with his wife, said. He described the harrowing progression of Christina's symptoms: a weakening right hand, an increasingly noticeable limp, slowing speech, and her right eye struggling to close properly.

After undergoing a brain scan, Christina's diagnosis was confirmed as incurable brain cancer, leaving Kenny "devastated". "Your world has just completely collapsed around you," he said.

"Your little girl... there's nothing really, essentially, that can be done. It's inoperable. You can't get to it because of the position of it in the brain.

"In 2017, really, the only thing that was on offer was two things: bouts of chemo, to maybe act as some control mechanism to keep things at bay for a bit, but certainly not a cure, and then the other alternative was a palliative care team," Kenny shared.

"We said: 'Well, look, we don't want to put her through chemotherapy. I'd go to hell and back if we can save her life, but I won't make someone go through hell and the end result is you can't cure it'."

Kenny and his wife chose to explore treatment options abroad, reaching out to medical professionals worldwide, including in America, Mexico, India and Germany. They discovered a clinic in Cologne, Germany, offering dendritic cell therapy – a treatment not available in the UK – and Christina's NHS doctors approved her travel for treatment.

"The six months that they said she had came and went, a year came and went, and a year-and-a-half went, and we just carried on with our battle, doing what we're doing," Kenny said.

In early 2020, Christina transitioned to the care of a doctor in Frankfurt for an immunotherapy medicine, also not available in the UK. While Kenny contemplates whether they are "possibly kicking the can down the road", Christina continues to live, enjoying a good quality of life.

This is aided by holistic therapies, including dietary changes to bolster her immune system and provide her body with the necessary resources to combat the disease.

"The battle's ongoing... we haven't won and we haven't lost," he said. Christina's treatment has made significant strides over the past two years following the identification of her specific cancer type.

While Kenny and his wife initially refused a biopsy upon her first diagnosis, recognising it as an invasive procedure that might not yield fresh insights, they agreed to a tumour biopsy at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London in 2023.

Medical professionals discovered that Christina was suffering from a diffuse leptomeningeal glioneuronal tumour – an uncommon tumour affecting the central nervous system that predominantly strikes children. This particular tumour type was only recognised as a separate condition in 2016, merely the year before Christina received her diagnosis, which explains why she was initially given a more general diagnosis as Kenny explains "they weren't identifying them" at the time.

Due to medical breakthroughs in cancer treatment since Christina's original diagnosis in 2017, there is now a treatment option available for her particular cancer type – a targeted cancer therapy called larotrectinib – that wasn't possible eight years ago.

"The tumour is neither growing nor shrinking. It just seems to be stable," Kenny said. "That means that we live to fight another day, it goes on."

Christina, now 12, has begun attending a specialist high school tailored to her complex needs resulting from cancer, which affects her mobility and cognitive abilities.

Despite these challenges, Kenny shares that "she's making friends, is filled with laughter, and she's got a great sense of humour".

"She's a great fighter, she hasn't got a massive awareness of what's wrong with her, she understands a bit of it, but it doesn't seem to get in the way of her enjoying each day and getting on with life," he explained.

Kenny is gearing up for the launch of his new album 'Unstoppable', drawing inspiration from Christina's courageous battle with cancer.

"The title Unstoppable is quite telling in the fact that we just keep going... it's a nice title to show the level of drive and fortitude, really, that we possess," Kenny remarked. "It was a good thing to get to dive into that album."

While Kenny is now witnessing a revival of his career, which saw him achieve fame in the 1990s with hits like 'Voices' and 'Wait For Me', his focus had to shift to ensuring Christina received the necessary medical care, temporarily putting his music career on hold.

"When I'm on stage doing a concert or in the studio, recording and singing, I am in my own little world," he said. "And for me, it's its own form of medicine."

Kenny Thomas's new album Unstoppable is set to drop on Friday, August 8. He'll be hitting the road for a UK tour in March 2026, with stops in Gateshead, Manchester, London, Southend, and Birmingham.