17 HEART OPS ..IN 13 YEARS; (and brave Sarah's still only 16).

Byline: BY ANDREW GREGORY

SARAH Haselgrove looks like a typical healthy teenage girl.

But the youngster has spent more than half her life in hospital and endured an extraordinary 17 heart operations before she was 14.

Her remarkable battle means she is the longest-surviving youngster in Britain with so many complex cardiac problems.

Now Sarah, 16, has been problem free for almost three years and strives to live as normal a life as possible. She even competes in carriage racing at Windsor Castle each year.

She said: "There are lots of things I can't do, so I just concentrate on things I'm good at.

"I've had a lot of time spent in hospital beds, but I'm fine now as long as I don't overdo it."

Born five weeks premature at 4lbs 4oz with half her heart not working, Sarah had her first op at three days old.

Suffering from hypoplastic left heart syndrome, she was not expected to live a week and had a further four surgeries in her first year.

Children with the rare condition do not often survive beyond infancy. Only a few have made it into their teenage years.

Mum Nicky, 45, remembers: "She was so small the tubes and machines completely swamped her." The following year, the tot faced five more operations including three heart and lung procedures and surgery to replace a faulty valve.

And it was touch and go when her diaphragm became paralysed and she couldn't breathe.

Nicky says: "It seemed never ending. I used to look at clothes for little girls and think, will she ever live to wear those?"

Finally Sarah was allowed home to Nicky and dad Steve, 51, brother Stuart, 18, and sister Holly, 13, in Hythe, Kent. At the age of nine she was well enough to go to school, where she had to catch up on four years of missed work.

It was not until she was 13 that Sarah had her 17th operation to replace her pacemaker at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

After all that she is just a year behind at school and will sit her GCSEs next year. And Sarah now needs only six-monthly checks.

The teenager, who hopes to be a dietician, said: "I still take medication every day to thin my blood and I have to be careful not to cut myself as it can cause heavy bleeding. Other than that I feel great."

Suzie Hutchinson, of Little Heart Matters, said: "Sarah's a reflection of the wonder of modern medicine."

CAPTION(S):

WONDER Sarah now needs only six-monthly checks; 4 months old; 1 year old; 8 years old