Desperate for a kidney donor, she watched her doberman 'choose' a random stranger at the beach
'We thought she had food or something, and Cenydd kept calling her back. In the end, we went over to apologize to her.'
Lucy Humphrey was given five years to live by her doctors after she was diagnosed with Lupus, which affected her kidneys. The Caerphilly woman was diagnosed with Lupus in 2000, but faced end-stage renal failure in 2017. After being on dialysis for a couple of years and waiting for a kidney donor, Humphrey was beginning to lose hope when her dogs one day sniffed the 'perfect' donor for her at a beach. Humphrey's Dobermanns became her god-sent angels who saved her life, per the BBC.
Forty-four-year-old Lucy Humphrey has been suffering from Lupus for more than a decade. She began her dialysis after her kidneys failed in 2019, but was told that she would only live for five more years if she couldn't find a donor. Lucy and her partner Cenydd Owen owned two Dobermanns, Jake and Indie, and had decided to take them for a holiday in their campervan to Cold Knap beach in Barry, Vale of Glamorgan. Lucy and her partner parked their vehicle overlooking the beach; however, their dog Indie kept going over to a stranger woman who was 100 yards away from them. Lucy recalled, "We thought she had food or something, and Cenydd kept calling her back. In the end, we went over to apologize to her."
Indie was going over to Katie James, a 40-year-old woman who was crocheting at the beach; she did not mind the dog coming over to her. Lucy, who was having a barbecue, invited Katie, who brought some drinks with her. However, as per Wion, upon learning that Lucy could not consume alcohol, she learnt about her illness and dialysis. That's when Katie's response left them shocked. Katie revealed that she had just registered herself in the kidney donation registry and was willing to donate her kidney to whoever needed it. Soon Katie and Lucy exchanged contacts and contacted a donor coordinator who revealed that they were a perfect match. "A surgeon told us it's a one in 22 million chance to find the perfect match, and that's what I needed as I've got Lupus," Lucy revealed.
The duo set up a WhatsApp group named The Kidney Gang, where they shared all the visits to the hospitals. In 2022, at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, Lucy had her transplant. Katie was excited to give Lucy a chance at life and considers herself "lucky" to have gotten to know her. Humphrey told Daily Record, "Originally, I was due to go into a pooled donation." If it were a pooled donation, Lucy would have never known her donor. However, now not only does she know the person who's responsible for saving her life, but she also gets to know how she is doing in life. A 2021 study published in PubMed noted that dogs have an excellent olfactory sense to detect individuals with diseases. "Olfaction can be influenced by various parameters like genetics, environmental conditions, age, hydration, nutrition, microbiome, conditioning, training, management factors, diseases, and pharmaceuticals," the study notes. While we are unsure as to how Indie was able to sniff and alert Lucy about Katie being her 'perfect' match, the dog indeed helped in saving its owner's life.
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