SCHOOLS RAISE THE ROOF FOR SICK CHILDREN
TRAGEDY AVERTED: Tom Rankin with his mother Anna
By Jane Clinton
NEXT WEEK 400 school pupils will sing their hearts out to raise money for children with kidney problems. JANE CLINTON talks to one mother who knows at first hand the dangers of kidney damage in the young.
When six-year-old Tom Rankin began complaining of a stomach ache his parents were not overly alarmed.
"A doctor came out and then we went to hospital as the doctor thought it was gastric flu, which it was, " explains Tom's mother Anna.
"He was put on a drip overnight as he was a bit dehydrated and in the morning he was fine. We thought that was the end of it."
It was not. If it had not been for the last-minute decision by a nurse to take Tom's blood pressure before he was discharged the story could have ended very differently.
"The nurse was a bit puzzled, " says Anna. "She thought there was something wrong with the monitor because the reading was so high. She came back with another one and it was exactly the same story. Tom's blood pressure was so high he could have had a stroke at any minute.
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Here was this healthylooking little chap and suddenly we were racing to Great Ormond Street Hospital.
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"Here was this healthylooking little chap and suddenly we were racing to Great Ormond Street Hospital." Anna, 49, and her husband Jamie, 53, were immediately surrounded by medical staff and Tom was transferred to the world-famous children's hospital where he was made stable and Anna and Jamie were given a diagnosis.
Tom was suffering from vesicoureteric reflux, which is when infected urine flows back up to the kidneys. "Tom had scarring and has 30 per cent kidney function but it is enough for him to live a normal life. Until the age of six though children cannot withstand this problem without the kidneys being scarred, " explains Anna.
Now 17, Tom is a healthy boarder at Stowe School in Buckinghamshire. "He has to be on blood pressure pills as the kidneys would normally regulate your blood pressure, " says Anna who lives near Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire and has three other children.
"Tom has check-ups every four months but otherwise he is absolutely fine. The consultant says he sees cases like Tom every year and wishes that routine blood pressure tests were taken on children. If this happened such problems could so easily be picked up.
Usually, a child with a urine infection develops a fever and suffers severe pain when passing urine but Tom exhibited none of the signs.
"We realise we were very lucky and Great Ormond Street Hospital was fantastic, " says Anna, "but we do feel guilty that Tom was probably born with healthy kidneys and they deteriorated throughout his childhood."
About 18 months after Tom's diagnosis Anna became a trustee of the charity Kids Kidney Research, which supports kidney and urological research and funds research projects and improves remedial care for affected children.
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The charity (previously know as the Kidney Research Aid Fund) was set up by a group of people who had friends and family with kidney disorders.
Although they were all adults with kidney disease, they decided to support paediatric kidney research since, just like Tom, many would have had healthy kidneys in adulthood if their conditions had been caught when they were children.
Thirty years on and the charity is still run by volunteers with on average more than 97 per cent of all funds received going to the cause. Patrons include actor Richard Baker, The Office's Lucy Davis and former film reviewer Barry Norman.
Anna will be giving a speech on behalf of the charity at a fundraising concert, The Alpha World Music Concert at Central Hall Westminster, London on October 16. Hosted by Classic FM DJ Lisa Duncombe, the concert will see 400 children perform music with the theme "This Is Our World".
THE ALPHA PLUS GROUP, which has a stable of 20 independent schools and colleges, hopes the concert can make a difference to children less fortunate than their pupils.
"Initially, we were going to just have a concert but then it seemed like a good idea to have a purpose behind it and make it a fundraising event, " explains a spokeswoman for the Alpha Plus Group.
"We thought Kids Kidney Research would be a fantastic cause." Kids Kidney Research has also won the support of singer Michael Ball. "I believe music can work wonders in raising people's spirits, especially kids, " he says. "This is a great cause and I'm very happy to be associated with it."
The Alpha Plus Music World Concert in aid of Kids Kidney Research takes place on October 16 at Central Hall Westminster, London, at 6pm. (Adults: £10, children: free).
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