Wakefield man recalls the moment he was woken in the middle of the night to find he had kidney disease and needed a transplant

Property Sourcing Manager, Liam Howorth, knew that something was wrong with his health, but had no idea that he was going though kidney failure.

As his symptoms became progressively worse, he visited his GP almost weekly, but his doctors were unable to join the dots until he was eventually offered a blood test.

At 1am the following morning, Liam suddenly woke to the sound of someone at his front door.

Outside was an ambulance with 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.

A bewildered Liam made his way to A&E and was shocked to find out that he had just four-per-cent kidney function and would need to start dialysis immediately.

Liam said: “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.”

Biopsy results found that Liam’s kidneys had been scarred, the most likely cause was from medication he took for an existing condition, ulcerative colitis.

Mesalazine can cause kidney problems, but Liam was in the dark and didn’t know he needed to check his kidney function regularly.

That night, Liam started his journey onto the gruelling treatment of dialysis.

Twelve-months on from his shock diagnosis, Liam was on holiday in North Yorkshire when once again he was woken in the early hours, this time by a policeman banging at his door.

Having forgotten to tell the transplant centre that he was going on holiday and not having phone signal, the hospital had sent the police to track him down.

Liam said: “I thought I was dreaming. 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.”

The transplant went ahead and Liam was free from dialysis. Sadly, the new organ didn’t flourish, never functioning much above 20 per cent and lasted just five years. Donor kidneys usually last an average of 20 years.

Liam is currently 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.

Sandra Currie, chief executive at Kidney Research UK said: “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.”