The Hour

Claire Bate is an 11-year-old girl who climbs mountains to raise money for Glasgow's Yorkhill Hospital. But that's not what makes her special. What singles her out is is that when she was born she had thirteen holes in her heart.

From a very young age, it was obvious that there was something wrong with Claire. Feeding her was a struggle and she used to take deep breaths from her stomach. At eight months she was taken for a routine check and her GP thought she heard a murmur. She was referred to specialists and they discovered that the wall between the lower chambers of her heart was peppered with holes. She was operated on a month later and for a while everything was fine.

"Clare had had the holes in her heart right from the day one," said her dad, Robin. "They didn’t think she was strong enough physically to cope with the operation to patch them as a baby, so they wanted us to come back probably from about the age of three. But as she was presenting well we decided to put it off until she got a bit older, when she was bigger and stronger."

As Claire got older she began to notice that she got out of breath quickly. She and her family spoke to a surgeon at Yorkhill Hospital who told them that her oxygen count was dropping and that some of the holes in her heart were now the width of a pencil. It was time for another operation.

At first it seemed a success. Surgeons patched up seven holes and repaired the heart’s mitral valve, which controls the flow of blood. She was moved in to intensive care, but shortly after had to return to theatre to fix a further six holes and replace her mitral valve with an artificial one.

While Claire was in surgery her mother Janey was planning her daughter’s funeral in her head. The only way she could cope was to ready herself for the worst.

Fortunately that never happened. Thanks to the staff at Yorkhill hospital Claire made a full recovery and is now fitter than ever.

A year later she was on top of Ben Nevis with her father, brother and her brother’s girlfriend, with £3,000 successfully raised for the hospital that saved her life.

Claire will need to continue to take the drug warfarin to prevent her blood clotting, but her time under the knife should be over for good. This week she starts high school, and she told The Hour that already she is planning her next fundraising trip, to the peak of Europe’s highest mountain, Mont Blanc.

IS YOUR HEART AS BIG AS CLAIRE'S?

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