The operation went well, and I was recovering and I was about to be released home. I was sitting in my room, I think it was 10 days after the operation, when I felt a horrendous pain in my hip. I can’t remember whether it was left or right now, and I’ve never felt anything like it. It struck me down basically. I managed to crawl onto the bed and press the buzzer and people came in. And gradually the severity of it dawned on the nursing staff and doctors.

The pain was brought under control, you know I was given painkillers. And then that was the final assessment after a couple of hours was made, and it was decided that I needed to be seen. So I was taken down to the operating theatre and put under anaesthetic. And then woke up four or five hours later to find that they’d removed the kidney.  Because I’d had an aneurysm, there was an infection which had put a hole in one of the main arteries in my hip. And they reckoned that if that was repaired, but they couldn’t risk the kidney because the infection had obviously come from the kidney, they couldn’t risk it happening again.