Lewis was refused an appointment ... and lost a kidney

LANDSCAPE gardener Lewis Moon, 36, has lost most of the function in one of his kidneys after he was refused a face-to-face appointment to treat a urine infection.

Lewis, from Wilmslow in Cheshire, developed a headache and fever in September and, two days later, started to feel discomfort when going to the bathroom.

The following day, a Sunday, his fever worsened and he began experiencing pain around his right kidney, and concluded that he had a urine infection.

He rang his GP surgery as soon as it opened on Monday morning, and was offered a telephone consultation with a nurse.

‘She was asking me what I thought was wrong,’ he says. ‘I explained how much pain I was in and she agreed it was probably a urinary tract infection and prescribed antibiotics.’

But as the level of pain increased and he started vomiting, Lewis rang the surgery twice more but was still refused an appointment with a doctor. After phone calls with a nurse, he was offered liquid painkillers and antibiotics which would be easier to keep down.

Lewis says: ‘By 4am the following day, after 12 hours of not keeping even fluids down and nearly 48 hours after first contacting the GP, my girlfriend Rebecka drove me straight to A&E, where I was put on a drip and spent the next five days on a ward.’

Specialists told Lewis the level of C-reactive protein in his body – a sign of inflammation or infection – was above 550mg/litre. A normal result is 10mg/litre, meaning that Lewis was fighting a severe infection.

He has since seen a renal specialist for an imaging scan on his kidneys, which revealed the right organ is now functioning at only ten per cent of its normal level and have suggested removing it.

‘The specialist said the high levels of C-reactive protein had likely caused more damage to the kidney, and that if I’d been seen sooner major damage could have been prevented. If the doctor had seen me, in person, then they’d have realised how ill I was.

‘Although I can live a normal life on one kidney, it could have been avoided. Was I fobbed off because I was young?’