When a lottery feeling has nothing to do with money
(Pic: Rory O'Neill.)
No, she didn't win big money. It was the moment when a text from her sister Kerrie Anne texted her that Kerrie's son William's blood results showed that his new kidney was working.
This was just hours after 9 year-old William had received his kidney. And why it was a Lottery moment was because Tara had donated the organ and was still in her own hospital room after the operation.
That was last October. And Tara is experiencing similar feelings on a regular basis as William succeeds in doing things which he had previously never been able to do in his life.
It is also why Tara is riding as one of the fundraising amateur jockeys in this year's Diageo Charity Steeplchase which raises funds for the Punchestown Kidney Research Fund.
"Wiliam has never known what it is to feel the way he does now," she says. "Before, if he even got a cold, it was a hospital thing straight away so they could manage the illness and his medicines until he got over it. Now he tells me that he 'feels so free', meaning that his blood isn't filled with all the chemicals he had to take to manage his condition."
William was in renal failure from the time he was born, and only survived because of a very strict diet and a lot of chemicals. It meant he was never a strong child, and the treatment left him feeling very sick.
"Now he can run around like any other child, play football, swim, and go to the local Playbarn," says Tara, whose business is in the provision of catering to film and TV companies on location. She moved from Dublin to Kill in Kildare about ten years ago because she became interested in horses, eventually buying her own and getting involved in show jumping.
When William was diagnosed with renal problems, the family was checked out for organ donation compatibility. Tara was found to be the best match. From that moment, she says there was no other option as far as she was concerned.
"I'm very close to my sister, and very close to William since he was born, so it was a no-brainer as far as I was concerned. Since the operation, people ask me when did I decide, but I actually never made a decision. The way I looked at it, it was always his kidney, and I was looking after it until he was big enough to accept an adult organ."
Tara pays tribute to her friend Catherine Doyle, the sister of Kilcullen businessman James Nolan, who donated one of her kidneys to James more than two decades ago. "I met Catherine and her husband Edward though the horses, and she was a great support. I could ask even the silly questions and she'd always have the answers. Then, when it came to the procedure, the people at Beaumont were brilliant."
Her involvement in the race is the result of a trip to last year's event, when she took William with her. "I told him that if he got his new kidney during the year, I'd do the race the following year."
So it is a fulfilment of a promise as much as anything else, but Tara is also doing it to raise awareness of the importance of research and organ donation.
"I'm training with Ted Walsh and his daughter Katie is giving me tuition. She's taking me over the gallops and talking me through the whole thing. Sometimes I think 'I can't do this' but she always brings me back."
The race this year is as always the last one of the Punchestown Festival, on 7 May. The involvement of Diageo as sponsor ensures that all money raised by the participants can go to the PKRF, and the race has already raised well in excess of €1m since it was inaugurated.
Just now, it is all that Tara is focused on. "I can't think of anything else. I'm blinkered on this for now."
And you can bet that when she finishes, no matter where in the field, it will be another 'Lottery moment'.
This piece was originally published in the Kildare Nationalist.
