A REMARKABLE mum is facing the prospect of a third major transplant after suffering repeated problems with her heart.

Nurse Tammy Neal, who had a heart and liver transplant as a teenager, has cheated death twice in the past 12 months after surviving a heart attack and cardiac arrest.

She fears her health will worsen as her new heart gets older.

She said: “I’ve had the heart now for 17 years and started to have problems with it.

"As time goes on I’m more at risk of coronary disease and I am looking at having another transplant.

"I already have two different people’s transplanted organs in me so it will be difficult to find a match.

"However there’s nothing I can do about it so it’s pointless worrying.”

The 34-year-old from Oswaldtwistle was born with a rare heart defect and needed a pioneering heart and liver transplant in 1996.

She then required her third liver three years ago.

But the latest scare came when she collapsed at her home in Rhoden Road.

Tammy said: “It came completely out of the blue. I was getting ready to go to bed and suddenly just felt faint and passed out.

“I fell on to the bed and my husband, Nick, called the ambulance.

"I’d had a heart attack and it was really scary but the A&E staff at Blackburn Hospital were fabulous.

"Then they rushed me to Blackpool Hospital in the middle of the night and I was there for three days.”

Tammy also had a cardiac arrest, in which the heart stops beating, last summer when she was working a night shift at the Royal Bolton Hospital and colleagues rushed to give her life-saving resuscitation treatment.

The mum-of-one, who gave birth to daughter Libby seven years ago despite being warned she might not survive the pregnancy, was inspired to work as a nurse after her frequent visits to hospital as a youngster.

But she has been off work since last year due to fears she was putting herself under too much strain.

She added: “I was very lucky to be able to have Libby and I’ve been told no more children.

"She’s used to mummy not being well sometimes, unfortunately, and she doesn’t want me to go back to work.

Despite figures released last week showing that organ donations after death have increased by 50 per cent in five years, Tammy said more donors were desperately needed.

Each year around 130 people have a heart transplant operation in England. Repeat transplants remain rare but are not unique.

Tammy said: “I think a lot more work still needs to be done.

"People need to think that if they’d accept an organ then they should be on the donor list.

“Most people aren’t lucky enough to get a second liver transplant because there’s a lack of donors.

"I had waited ten months and then I got so poorly they had to put me on the national emergency list.”

Lancashire Telegraph columnist Dr Tom Smith said: “I think this shows how some people have got absolutely fantastic courage and ability to put behind them the struggles that other people would absolutely be smothered and drowned by.

“Very few people have got the resilience and strength of character to undergo two liver transplants and a heart transplant because there’s such a long recovery period.

"The fact she’s had a child as well is very special and almost unheard of.

“This is also a real message for people to sign up to the organ donor register.”