By Celine Klosterman
CLINTON — Warren Lewis knew students and staffers at Prince of Peace Catholic School cared for each other, but he didn’t anticipate how much they’d rally around him in a tough time.
A senior in his second year at the school, Lewis discovered as much in fall 2012 after kidney failure sent him to University of Iowa Children’s Hospital for two weeks. Besides providing a stream of visitors to Iowa City, Prince of Peace community members gave his dad several rides to the hospital, raised funds to defray medical expenses, arranged Meals on Wheels, worked with hospitals to coordinate his academic and dialysis schedule, and talked with doctors to help him meet his goal of returning to basketball.
“It made me feel like I was special; like people actually care,” Lewis said.
At 17, he’d just begun the fall semester when he started feeling lethargic and throwing up. After a week of vomiting, he went to Mercy Medical Center in Clinton on Sept. 14. “They found out my kidneys were failing,” he said.
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