AN eight-year-old is able to swim and play with her friends for the first time thanks to two complicated heart operations in two days.
Shona Knight, of Highstone Avenue, was given only a 50/50 chance of survival when she was six weeks old.
She made steady improvements, but at seven, she started becoming immune to the drugs and deteriorated again.
She needed keyhole surgery on her heart. A nine-hour operation became a 12-hour operation because of complications and Shona suffered heart failure.
Doctors managed to revive her and repair her heart, but even after 12 hours they could not finish what they had started, so she was brought round and had to through another three-and-a-half hour operation the very next day to fit a pacemaker.
Claire said: "It was awful really because she never properly came round from the first operation. She didn't recognise any of her family, and she was in pain. Then she had to go under anaesthetic again.
"She's a totally different child now. She's bouncy and happy, and she's just got a badge for swimming, which she could never do before."
Shona is expecting to need a quadruple heart bypass when she's about 11, but she doesn't let it bother her.
She met Barnsley pop star and TV presenter Sam Nixon at Christmas who told her not to worry because 'scars are cool'.
