A husband and wife are planning to take part in a charity run 22 years after a cancer diagnosis which rushed their family planning.

Kevin Lane, 49, from Gillingham, received the official diagnosis that he had cancer just 48 hours after meeting his future wife, Donna.

The new couple were immediately faced with decisions about their plans to have a family together as doctors took steps to preserve Kevin's sperm before treatment.

Now, 22 years later and happily married, the pair are parents to son Alex, 16, through IVF.

This year, to give back to research and help celebrate 30 years of Race for Life, Kevin and Donna will be running the 5k event at Salisbury’s Hudson’s Field on June 11.

Kevin said: “It was a bit embarrassing dropping my trousers to my GP at the age of 27 but he said straight away what he thought it could be and soon after, I was booked in for surgery to confirm what it was.

"I tried to block it out of my mind by going out and then I met Donna.”

Donna, 45, said: “The weekend we got together, we had met at a music festival and the next day Kevin had to say to me, ‘By the way, I’m going to the hospital tomorrow because they think I have testicular cancer.’ I knew I wanted to support him from that moment on.

“It did mean that we had to have conversations really early about whether or not we wanted to have children, because they had to freeze his sperm before removing the testicle.

“Suddenly you find yourself talking to someone you’ve only been with for three days with him saying, ‘If I die, do you want to use my sperm?’ It was the most surreal moment.”

“It made our relationship really intense, really quickly because we had to make those life choices, but I knew I wanted to be part of that.”

After having his testicle removed, doctors discovered that Kevin’s cancer had spread to his stomach, so over a period of around eighteen months, he underwent surgery several times and received chemotherapy.

Soon after Kevin had recovered, the couple began IVF treatment and after two attempts, they received the incredible news that Donna was pregnant with Alex.

Kevin said: “Having Alex was probably the proudest moment of my life.  It was a huge milestone for me and a big step in my life after cancer.”