CLAIRE MILLAR'S eyes light up as she holds out a framed photo taken at her school prom last June. In her long pink dress, she looks beautiful. With excitement in her voice she describes how she had her make up and hair professionally styled before she was picked up in a limo which took her and her friends to the Queensferry Hotel.
She looks like any other teenage girl delighted to be getting properly glammed up for the first time but the prom was just one year after Claire, who was born with a rare congenital heart disorder, underwent a lifesaving heart and lung transplant.
At their home in Deans, Livingston, Claire's mum Dawn, recalls: "It was lovely to see her all done up. A lot of effort went into it but it was money well spent. There were many times over the last couple of years when we thought we wouldn't see that moment."
As they prepare for a much more joyful event – the celebration of Claire's 18th birthday – Dawn hopes that the bleak period when her daughter's health deteriorated is firmly behind them.
And, as befits the plucky young woman who loves to shop, play on the computer and experiment with makeup and fashion, they are planning a huge party in a local hall.
Changed days, indeed, because there was a time before her transplant when even a stroll around the shopping centre would have been too much effort for ailing Claire. She needed 24-hour care, was too weak to climb the stairs and being confined to the house was really getting her down.
Dawn, 42, reflects: "Before the transplants she looked like death. She was a terrible colour and lost a lot of weight."
Claire's health problems began as a baby, when she was diagnosed with a rare heart disorder, in which the main arteries to the heart are the wrong way round, effectively starving the body of oxygen. She spent two weeks in intensive care while doctors tried to stabilise her heart and she underwent a major operation before she had even reached her first Christmas.
For the next 14 years, Claire led a fairly normal life, albeit on regular medication but, in October 2005, she had a heart attack while staying at a friend's in Balerno. Claire's memory of the incident is understandably hazy.
"I was frightened and thought I was dying," she recalls. "We were all out in the street mucking about. We were running and the next thing I remember I was waking up on the ground. I remember my friend screaming."
She was taken to St John's Hospital in Livingston where she remained overnight, struggling for breath in coronary care before going in a police-escorted ambulance to the intensive care unit at Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow. A week later she was fitted with a pacemaker and a defibrillator box in case her heart stopped again.
Claire got home after three weeks but began getting terrible palpitations and was re-admitted on Bonfire Night two years ago with an infection which took a fortnight to clear. "We thought when she got the pacemaker that would be it – they told us for a few years at least – but she couldn't walk upstairs, wash her hair or dress herself – nothing, absolutely nothing," remembers Dawn, who had to take a lot of time off from her job as a school cleaner to care for her youngest daughter.
In March 2006, a greatly weakened Claire went to see experts at the Great Ormond Street Hospital in London for a transplant assessment. "It didn't come as a big shock to me," says Dawn, "I'd had my suspicions since she was a baby it would come to a transplant."
But just weeks later, she took very ill and was transferred by air ambulance from Yorkhill Hospital to Great Ormond Street where she went straight on the heart transplant list. "She was going into heart failure," recalls Dawn with a shudder. "The pacemaker and defibrillator box weren't doing their job and I was told she would need a lung transplant as well because her lungs had been damaged by her heart working too hard. The doctor took me into a room and told me to get all the family down because she was so ill she might not survive."
About a week later, on May 27, 2006, they were told a donor had become available and, the next day, Claire was taken down to theatre for her transplant. She had only been on the transplant list a few days.
Claire made a good recovery after her surgery. "Although she was on steroids and was quite puffy, she looked so much better compared to the way she had before the transplant," says Dawn.
She knows that the donor who saved her life was an 18-year-old English law student called Laura who died of meningitis and Claire is under no illusions that it must have been an enormous decision for the youngster's parents to have released her organs for donation. So in gratitude, Claire wrote to thank Laura's mother.
"Her mum says she was a really girly girl just like me, into her hipster jeans and shopping," says Claire. "I'm so grateful to Laura."
Claire realises that with such a chronic shortage of donors, she was lucky that she was able to have her transplant so quickly. Some are not so lucky and the question of whether inclusion on the register should be compulsory has recently been the subject of hot political debate.
Claire and her mother say they would back moves to make donation obligatory, unless the patient specifically opted out. "I definitely think you don't know when you are going to be in that position," adds Dawn. "I'd say to everyone to become a donor.
"It's made so much difference to my life. I feel I can do anything now. I feel a lot better, like I'm back to my normal self before I was ill. Before the transplant I thought I'd be like that forever, not being able to do anything. It's a very big change."
Her mum adds with a smile: "She's great now. She doesn't do the tidying up or the ironing mind you, but she gets about. If she gets a chest infection she needs to slow down a bit. We were told the winter would be the worst time and she was in hospital for five days in November but I wasn't worried because I know they are on top of it."
So what's the outlook now for Claire? "As long as she keeps healthy and takes her medication she could live as long as the rest of her friends," says Dawn. "It's entirely down to the individual, keeping healthy and taking the medication."
For now the pair are looking forward to an event Claire would never have made, if it hadn't been for the kindness of Laura and her family – her 18th birthday party.
Claire, who is studying childcare at college, is excited about buying a new dress and has already picked out one in pink – her favourite colour, and the colour of her phone and keyboard. Another limousine will be rolling up on the night to ferry them to the nearby venue.
Looking fondly at her daughter, Dawn beams: "We're going to celebrate her 18th in style. Just reaching her 18th is emotional. We are going to go out and enjoy ourselves and take plenty of photographs."
DEMAND FAR OUTRIPS SUPPLY OF TRANSPLANT ORGANSIT is now 40 years since the first heart transplant was carried out in the UK in May 1968.
Since then, 6000 heart transplants have been carried out in Britain, of which 70 have been on people who live in the EH postcode area.
Six people in the Lothians have, like Claire, had combined heart and lung transplants, since the first one from this region in 1989.
Locally, 149 people are currently waiting on transplants – 130 need a kidney, one person needs a pancreas, another needs a kidney and pancreas.
There are also three patients who require a heart transplant, four are desperate for a lungs transplant, while nine need livers. One patient is also waiting on a liver and kidney transplant.
The NHS Organ Donor Register urgently needs people willing to donate their organs after their death.
The average wait for a kidney transplant in the UK is 841 days.
A spokesman for UK Transplant said: "There's a chronic shortage of donated organs for transplant. About 9000 people in the UK need transplants but only 3000 are carried out each year.
"Everyone who joins the Organ Donor Register is offering hope to people who need a transplant."
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Sign up at the Organ Donor Line on 0845 60 60 400 or at www.uktransplant.org.uk