Transplant girl recovers with 55-year-old heart
She looks like a typical happy-go-lucky schoolgirl on the threshold of her teenage years. But inside Sally Slater beats a 55-year-old heart.
Six years ago the nation was gripped by Sally's remarkable last-gasp survival story. The healthy six-year-old was struck down by a virus which attacked her heart and she appeared to be within hours of death when her parents made a desperate appeal for an organ donor.
Having already said goodbye to her three times, the miracle they thought was beyond hope happened. Sally underwent a heart transplant operation and made a remarkable recovery.
Within months she was back in school and now the only sign of her ordeal is a faint scar and the daily drugs she takes to prevent rejection.
It was widely believed that Sally's survival was down to the death of another child, but her family revealed how they owe her life to a 49-year-old woman.
Sally, who celebrates her 13th birthday on Friday, said: "If it wasn't for this lady, I wouldn't be alive now."
A silver horseshoe chain around her neck - a gift from the donor's family - is a constant reminder of the original owner of the heart now beating inside her.
The schoolgirl lives in the North Yorkshire village of Kirkby Malham with parents Jon and Bridget, 42, and brothers Joe, 11, and Charlie, 10.
Sally goes to Settle Middle School, enjoys playing the piano and acting and hopes one day to be a teacher.
It's a future that her parents had given up on six years ago when she lay unconscious in a hospital intensive care unit.
The little girl was kept alive by a ventilator and an artifical heart pump after her own heart was destroyed by the virus in just three weeks.
With doctors warning she had hours to live Mr and Mrs Slater made appeals for a donor, more in the hope of raising the issue of organ shortages than realistically expecting to save their daughter.
That night their prayers were answered. A donor suddenly became available, Sally underwent the transplant operation at Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and has not looked back since.
Mr Slater, a financial planner, said: "She has a pacemaker and takes pills every day, otherwise she's normal and healthy."
The identity of the donor is a secret, but there has been 'tentative contact' between the two families.
"The heart is from a lady from the North-East," he said. "The family will always be in our thoughts. It's a debt we can never repay."
Due to the relative old age of her heart and the effects of drugs it is possible Sally may require another transplant in future, but she's just happy to be able to enjoy being a teenager.
Sally said: "I have to go to hospital for tests every three months - I'll have to do that forever, and I may have to have another operation but I'm not scared."
Mr Slater added: "The doctors tell you from the start that they don't know in general what will happen in future, really we just take things a month at a time. But having the heart of a mature woman hasn't had any affect on her personality."
New laws enable doctors to use organs from a donor who has given permission even if family members object and Mr Slater hopes the change will help increase the supply of transplant organs.
"Hopefully it's a step in the right direction," he said.
