A 55-year-old US man has sued his doctors and sought USD 1 million in damages, claiming that surgeons mistakenly removed his healthy kidney instead of a cancerous one.
Glenn Hermes and his wife Bernadette from Fort Worth, Texas, filed suit against his urologist Robert Stroud and radiologist David Fenyes, for malpractice and gross negligence.
When Hermes learned that he had cancer in one kidney early last year, he agreed to have surgery to remove his left kidney before it had a chance to spread.
He checked into Plaza Medical Centre in Fort Worth and his left kidney was removed. Hermes thought it was a crisis averted.
But then Hermes soon learned that a CT scan had been misread and that the wrong kidney was removed - it was his right kidney that was riddled with cancer, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported.
Hermes, chief executive officer for a wound care and hyperbaric medicine management company, was looking forward to retirement and spending time with his grandchildren.
Now, he deals with an uncertain future wondering if he will face dialysis, a transplant or the possibility of taking expensive drugs.
"There isn't a day that goes by where I don't think about this," Hermes was quoted as saying by the daily.
A portion of Hermes' right kidney has been removed because of the cancer, and he now has limited kidney function.
The suit was filed on Tuesday. Hermes and his wife, who live in Arlington, are seeking over USD 1 million in damages.
