A rider who got the call to say the kidneys she needed were available while at a show with her daughter made the journey there in the horsebox – with the horse still in the back.
Marie Cox was at the British Dressage under-25 championships at Sheepgate with her daughter Lauren when the Nottingham hospital called to say there had been a match. Marie had suffered kidney failure in 2020, managed with dialysis, and had been on the transplant list since May.
“They said then that the call could come at any time but it wasn’t likely to be sooner than 12 months, and it might never happen,” Lauren told H&H. “So we just went about our day-to-day lives.
“It was funny because on the way to Sheepgate, my mum said ‘Maybe we should have had a plan’, and I said: ‘You won’t get a call; we’re only there two days’! We’d been to other stay-away shows and hadn’t really thought about it.”
Lauren was about to warm up her 14-year-old mare Pandora for the prelim semi-final when Marie’s phone rang.
“We were standing there saying ‘What do we do?’” Lauren said. “She said we were about three hours away at a show and they said that was fine and ‘Let your daughter do her test, then get down here’. But to go in and do a test when you’ve just had news like that wasn’t easy!”
Lauren and Pandora nevertheless posted a good enough score to qualify for the next day’s championship final.
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“In the lorry on the way to hospital, Mum was saying we could go back for it and I said ‘Don’t be silly’,” Lauren said. “We were in Derby and it would normally be a couple of hours but of course we were in the lorry, and it was rush hour; everything was against us.
“Then we got there, still with the horse in the back, driving round the hospital car park with everyone thinking ‘What on earth are they doing?’!”
Lauren dropped Marie, who had her overnight gear as she had been staying away.
“But she went in in her jodhpurs and riding stuff and had to say ‘I’ve been at a show’; they said it was the first time anyone had come with their horse to hospital!” she said.
Lauren drove Pandora the half-hour home and Marie went in for the nine-hour surgery to transplant both kidneys the next morning. Five days later, she was sent home to continue her recovery – and Lauren picked her up in the car.
“She’s missing going to the yard; we’ve got two and she rides with me and is so active but we’ve got to be really strict,” Lauren said. “It’s killing her but she has been to the yard a few times to get some fresh air. They’ve said six months before she can ride but after eight weeks she can start some gentle exercise. I think the doctors panicked a bit when she said she’d be back on a horse soon; they said ‘No you won’t!’”
The family hopes Marie will be able to go to watch Lauren and Pandora at the Petplan Summer Area Festival Championships next month; having won the preliminary freestyle last year, they have now qualified for the novice freestyle.
“She’s very much planning to be there; she wouldn’t miss it for anything,” Lauren said.
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Eleanor is an experienced journalist who spent over eight years working for local and national newspapers before joining H&H as news editor in March 2016. Passionate about equine welfare and exposing the truth, Eleanor has reported on all aspects of the industry, from Brexit to anti-bullying campaigns, and from dressage rules to mules. Her sport of choice is showjumping, in which she competes her own horses, and she also enjoys reporting at local jumping shows through to international championships.
