'I thought I was dreaming' - How West Yorkshire man was woken by a knock in the night to be told he had kidney failure

Liam had been experiencing various symptoms including weight loss, nausea and sickness, a change in taste, feeling constantly thirsty, pain in his coccyx and irritated skin all over his body. As they became progressively worse, he visited his GP almost weekly, but doctors were unable to join the dots until he was eventually offered a blood test.

In the early hours of the following morning, in April 2016, Liam suddenly woke to the sound of someone at his front door. Looking out of the window, he saw an ambulance and with it was an out-of-hours doctor who told the then 32-year-old that he was in renal failure and needed to go to the hospital straight away. “I was really bewildered thinking this can’t be happening,” he recalls. “Half asleep as well.”

Liam made his way to A&E at St James’s Hospital in Leeds, where further tests took place. He was shocked to find out that he had just four per cent kidney function and would need to start dialysis immediately. “I can remember vividly the doctor on call reeling off a number of symptoms and each one I had been experiencing and taken to the GP. I had no knowledge of kidney disease before I crash landed in A&E that night. I really did think that they’d give me some medication and I’d be on my way, but that wasn’t the case at all.”

Liam was overwhelmed and given some material to read to try to get to grips with his new life-long condition. Needing to make an urgent decision about life-saving treatment, he decided to opt for in-hospital dialysis three days a week. “That’s when the realisation hit,” the property sourcing manager says. “There’s no going back from this, it’s going to be a long slog.”

The wait for a transplant, however, was quicker than anticipated. After being put on the waiting list in November of 2016, he got news from the police in April 2017. Having forgotten to tell the transplant centre that he was going on holiday – and being in an area without phone signal, the hospital had sent the police to track him down.

“You’re told you could get a call in the middle of the night if a donor crops up as obviously you don’t know when people are going to die,” he explains. “I thought I was dreaming again; I opened the door to see the police standing in the doorway and the first thought was obviously what have I done? They explained that a kidney had become available, and they needed me to get to the hospital as soon as possible. I even used their radio to communicate with the transplant team and confirm that I was coming, albeit still in my pyjamas.”

The transplant operation went ahead that afternoon and Liam was free from dialysis. But sadly the new organ didn’t flourish, never functioning much above 20 per cent. It lasted just five years, way below the average of 20. Liam is now recovering from a second kidney transplant which he had over Christmas. Reaching around 60 per cent function, the new organ will allow him to live life to the full again and he hopes it will last longer than the first. But the shock of crashing into renal failure stay with him forever.

It is why he’s sharing his story and working to raise awareness of symptoms with Kidney Research UK. Sandra Currie, the chief executive at the charity, says: “Liam’s story is unfortunately one that occurs far too often. Kidney patients often show very few symptoms and remain undiagnosed and unaware of the condition that will impact their lives forever. If more people understand and monitor their kidney health, we can prevent or slow down progression towards kidney failure and stop patients from ‘crash landing’ in hospital, needing urgent treatment to keep them alive.”

The organisation is encouraging people to find out if they are at risk of kidney disease via its free online health check. Visit kidneyresearchuk.org/kidneyhealthcheck