Debbie Kearney survived to raise her own family thanks to pioneering surgery in the '70s.
A Glasgow mum-of-one says she wouldn't be alive without the life-saving heart surgery she had when she was a baby after doctors discovered her main arteries were joined and leaking blood into her lungs.
She moved to Glasgow when she was five-years-old and now lives in Penilee with husband Paul and 14-year-old son Max, and has recovered from the surgeries she had decades ago. "The second surgery took place during Christmas time and I was in over that period and had been looking forward to getting home but unfortunately I developed a cold and they wouldn’t let me out.
"My heart condition was no barrier to anything I ever wanted to do or be. After I recovered from my second open heart surgery, my mum told me to get up, grab life and just join in like everyone else. It’s become my motto for life.” Today, thanks to research, more than 8 out of 10 survive to adulthood. BHF research is funded entirely by donations from the public.
"Some heart defects like mine are not hereditary and as the doctor told my mum for us, it was just down to ‘sheer bad luck’.
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