LOVE on the ward

When Emma Ball needed dialysis treatment, the last thing on her mind was romance

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When it comes to romantic settings, a candlelit restaurant or a moonlit walk on the beach might spring to mind. But for Emma Ball and husband Clint, their romantic backdrop couldn’t have been more different. In fact, the couple, who wed in 2011, fell in love in the unlikely setting of a hospital kidney ward.

Emma, then a single mum to young son Daniel, was visiting regularly for dialysis as she waited desperately for a kidney transplant, while Clint was working on her ward as a healthcare assistant. When he told her he’d had a transplant himself, Emma, now 55, thought at first it was a chat-up line.

‘Clint and two friends he worked with used to try and make me smile,’ recalls Emma, from Stoke-on-Trent. ‘Having them to chat to, especially Clint, made a world of difference during what was a pretty horrible time. When I went in for treatment three times a week, I always had Bed 7, and more and more, Clint would come and hang out at the window next to my bed. We'd chat and have a laugh. When he told me he’d had a kidney transplant too, at first, I thought it was just a line, but I soon realised it wasn’t.’

After their first date in a local pub in 2004, instigated by Emma after months of growing closer, the pair quickly became a couple. By then Clint’s new kidney, which he'd received in 2001 after 22 months on the transplant waiting list, was already called ‘Ken’.