Sue was clinging to life by a thread after she was diagnosed with a deadly liver condition, and doctors told her she wouldn’t make it without a transplant. The selfless act of a young woman who died aged 24 means she’s here today
Radiating health and happiness as she hands the medal she has just won to her pal, Sue Bennett’s gift salutes their life affirming friendship.
For nearly a decade, fellow mum Sharron Jones has celebrated each victory with her pal, as she has proudly won 9 medals for athletic achievements all over the world.
Each win is a poignant reminder that none of this would be possible, had it not been for Sharron’s daughter, Amy – her only child – whose devastating death at just 24, following an epileptic seizure, provided the liver transplant that saved Sue’s life.
Speaking to mark National Transplant Week – which ends today (Sun 13) and is held to encourage people to become donors – Sue, 51, says: “Every time I go over the finish line, I think of Amy and the gift she has given me. And to be able to give each medal to Sharron after I finish, is a way of saying thank you for that.”
Remembering back to the first medal Sue gave her, Sharron, 56, says: “When she gave me that medal, I cried. It was such an amazing thing that she had achieved – and all because of the gift that Amy had given her.”
Sue now competes in international transplant games and athletic events. Each time she wins a precious medal, she hands it to Sharron – the last one coming from a gruelling ironman challenge in Wales, while she hopes to win a 10th at the World Transplant Games in Dresden, Germany, next month.
Yet, before her transplant, Sue was so ill, she was clinging to life by a thread. Diagnosed with a deadly liver condition called primary biliary cholangitis 15 years previously, at first medication managed her symptoms, but with time her health began to deteriorate.
She says: “I lost three stone in weight and suffered with unbearable itching all over my body.
“I actually slept with a cheese grater in bed because of the itching – it was the only thing powerful though to scratch it. And I’d rub my feet over the rough door mats until they bled.
“I was so fatigued and bruised, too. I asked the doctor if I was going to die and he said yes I was, without a transplant.”
Mum to Millie, now 22, Billy, 20, and Jack, 18, she continues: “I was terrified that I was going to leave them without a mum.”
Sue, an admin worker, was listed for a transplant in November 2014. Her brother volunteered to be a live donor, but she had lost so much weight that his liver was too big.
But in June 2015, she received the call to say a donor had been found and she was rushed to Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
When she arrived, she was told that her donor – a young woman – was still on life support in the hospital and her mother was by her side.
“It was devastating to hear that,” says Sue, who lives in Stafford with husband Anthony, 53, who works in sales at a steel company.
“I was so distressed – all I could think of was that mother, who was sat by her daughter’s bedside, going through the worst grief imaginable.”
Sue had some insight into how she must be feeling having, years earlier, given birth to a stillborn daughter, Eleanor May.
“I was just praying that her daughter would open her eyes again and everything would be all right for them,” says Sue.
“When I said to the doctor that I didn’t want the transplant to go ahead, he told me that she didn’t have any hope of survival, and if I didn’t have the transplant, I wouldn’t be going home either. It was the harsh reality, so I agreed.”
Fortunately, the transplant was a success, but while Sue was recovering in hospital, she made a vow to herself and to the mother she hadn’t yet met.
“I saw a poster about Transplant Sport and I promised myself that one day I would win a medal and give it to my donor’s mother,” she says
A few months later, Sue wrote a letter to Sharron Jones, the mother of her donor Amy – whose name she did not yet have.
Just 24 when she died, Amy had suffered an epileptic seizure and couldn’t be saved.
Sue says: “I felt so guilty that Sharron had lost her daughter and I’d gained a new chance at life. So I told her I was sorry and asked for her forgiveness. I told her that more than anything, I wished she’d opened her eyes.”
Sharron wrote back and then the two women arranged to meet up in August 2016 at the Cheshire hotel where Amy had worked.
Sue says: “I tried to keep my composure but there were a lot of tears. I hugged Sharron and said ‘can you forgive me?’ I felt so guilty that I was there and Amy wasn’t.’
Sue – as she had promised herself she would while recovering in hospital – gave Sharron the gold medal that she had won only weeks earlier at the 800 metres at the British Transplant Games.
It is her mission to give her very special friend every single one she wins.
“Sharron came to see me in one of the Ironman competitions,” says Sue. “She was there in the tunnel as I finished the marathon and I ran straight into her arms. I didn’t realise she would be at the finish line like that, and it meant so much.”
At next month’s World Transplant Games she will compete in the 200m freestyle swimming, the cycling and the sprint triathlon competitions.
She continues: “I’m hoping that I’ll be able to give my tenth medal to Sharron after that. We are both mums who have lost their daughters and we would both do anything to hold them again.’”
Sharron, a sterile technician in a pharmaceutical company, who lives with partner Wayne Hughes, 57, a pipelayer, in Wrexham, agrees, saying: ‘“Whether its a daughter who was born sleeping, or a daughter who has a lifetime of memories, there are always the ‘what ifs.’ Both Sue and I know that and it gives us such a deep connection.
“We have had nearly ten years of friendship, and I hope that we will have many more.’”
To find out about organ donation, visit: https://www.organdonation.nhs.uk/