An Ontario man says his recent trip to Europe to celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary was ruined after Air Canada lost the portable dialysis machine he needs to survive his kidney failure.

Tom Jakobszen, who hooks himself up to the machine for nine hours each night, said he called Air Canada beforehand to make sure he could take the machine onboard with him during his flight to Denmark and was assured that it would not be a problem.

But when he arrived at his departure gate, he was told the machine was too big. Officials checked it in through priority baggage, attaching tags to it marking it as “fragile.”

The machine never arrived in Denmark.

“The case came around the carousel, we picked it up and noticed it was extremely light,” Jakobszen told CTV Windsor. “There was no machine inside. I literally could not believe it.”

Employees at the airport in Copenhagen spent four hours searching for the dialysis machine, but could not find it.

“I panicked a few times,” Jakobszen said. “I was kind of in a trauma situation to be honest with you because I didn’t know what I was going to do.”

Air Canada said in a statement to CTV Windsor that “while we have been unable to determine why it did not arrive, we immediately contacted a local Copenhagen hospital to arrange for a temporary device.”

Jakobszen disputes that retelling of events, saying that it was he, and not the airline, that contacted the supplier of the dialysis machine and arranged for him to pick up a replacement at the Copenhagen hospital. Moreover, he added, since the machine was not programmed to his exact specifications, he didn’t get proper dialysis over his 10-day trip.

“I knew I was going to have difficulty walking, but I didn’t expect how bad it was going to be,” he said.

Jakobszen told CTV Windsor that he wants Air Canada to compensate him $10,000 – the full cost of his European cruise. The airline has said only that it will pay the dialysis company the value of the machine and has offered him a $1,000 flight voucher for use within the year. In the meantime, it has asked him to fill out a standard lost luggage form.

“This is not a piece of lost luggage,” he said. “This is a piece of life-maintaining medical equipment and I can’t have it treated in such an insignificant way. This isn’t a petty issue.”

With files from CTV Windsor.