FIFTEEN years ago, surgeons carried out a pioneering heart transplant on baby Kaylee Davidson after her mother Carol was told her child wouldn't survive without it.

Barry Nelson reports how Kaylee and her family coped with being the UK's first successful child heart transplant patient and how she's just a normal teenager at the end of the day.

WHEN Kaylee Davidson gets home from school she likes to play her Darren Hayes CDs. She likes seeing her friends, hanging out and having a laugh. It seems a long way off, but sometimes the 15-year-old thinks about the future, about one day being a nursery nurse and maybe even having children of her own. But first she has to tidy up her bedroom - or she will be in deep trouble with her mum.

Kaylee, from Washington, Tyne and Wear, seems a perfectly unexceptional teenager. But exactly 15 years ago today she was on the receiving end of six hours of pioneering surgery which ended in Kaylee becoming the first British baby to receive a new heart.

Kaylee became dangerously ill five months after she was born. Specialists diagnosed a rare and aggressive viral form of heart disease called cardiomyopathy. With no conventional cure available, doctors at the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle decided to gamble on a heart transplant, even though two previous attempts in the UK had failed.

Looking back to October 1987, Kaylee's mother, Carol, said the hours, days and weeks after the six hour operation to give her baby daughter a new heart were just a fog. "It was very, very scary. I didn't realise the significance of what was happening. I was living in a dream."

Specialists told her Kaylee had a 50/50 chance of pulling through - but it was her only chance of life. The brutal fact was that without a transplant her first-born child would die.

With the two unsuccessful attempts at child heart transplants weighing heavily on her mind, she remembers the agonising wait while the surgeons fought to save Kaylee's life and make British medical history. Carol remembers that the longest hour came just before she was allowed in to see her baby. And it was months before she began to feel more confident that Kaylee was going to be all right.

"I can't really believe it's been 15 years since the transplant. I feel as if I've just blinked and the time has gone," says Carol.

Because of the anniversary, she has been carrying out a round of media interviews but at the time, she had no idea there would be such a massive interest in the story, she now cringes at how she looked on the very first press conference.

"I turned up in front of the cameras in a scruffy sweatshirt and a pair of jeans, I can't believe it now, it was on the national news," she laughs.

"I suppose I was very nave, I thought it would be on the local TV and then I got a phone call from my health visitor who was on holiday in American saying she had seen it on the news over there," says Carol.

It took the family a long time to accept that Kaylee was really going to be all right.

"It took us a long time to be more relaxed about her, well over the first year. It's the same for many of the families. At first you feel as if you will never be away from the hospital and you watch them all the time," says Carol, who has been heavily involved in supporting other transplant families in the UK despite holding down a full-time job as a childcare inspector for Ofsted. Partner Steve designs electrical engineering systems in building services.

"You do make yourself a bit paranoid but gradually you start to relax," says Carol.

One of the problems is that people assume that a heart transplant is a once-and-for-all cure and everything onwards is going to be rosy. That's simply not true.

"These children are high maintenance kids. At the moment we go back to the Freeman for checks every nine weeks."

There has been what Carol calls "the odd scare" over the years.

"Basically children like Kaylee need to be watched for any signs of temperature or infection. She has had her fair share of being in and out of hospital. Some years are better than others. If she gets a bug, generally speaking, we take her in to the Freeman."

The most spectacular incident was nearly two years ago when worried staff at Kaylee's school, Oxclose Community School in Washington, called in an air ambulance after she complained of chest pains.

"The school have a Kaylee Plan in case anything goes wrong. On this particular day the school rang me saying she had a chest pain. When I got there they had sent the air ambulance," says Carol, still slightly embarrassed at such a fuss.

"It landed in the school playground and when it took off, every window was filled with faces," she says.

"It was like something out of a James Bond film," says Carol, who reckons it must have done wonders for Kaylee's cool rating among her friends.

Apart from looking after Kaylee, Carol now has two other daughters, Lindsay, 14, and Rebecca, 11.

She tries hard to make sure that everyone is treated the same and gets the same level of attention.

"I am very proud of all of them, for the way Kaylee has coped and for the way her sisters have supported her all the time," says Carol. "But with htree girls in the house, it's hell getting in the bathroom."

Apart from running a home and holding down a demanding job, Carol has also thrown herself into supporting other families who are either waiting for transplants or have undergone transplants.

In the first few years after Kaylee's transplant there really wasn't anyone to talk to who had been through that whole scenario. We were the first and we were very much on our own."

In 1996, she founded Heart Transplant Families Together, a mutual support group for people who have gone through a similar ordeal.

"I began to get phone calls and I ended up speaking to parents all over the country. We got together and now we have got more than 100 members."

She has also campaigned on behalf of the Organ Donor register in a bid to increase the flagging numbers of heart transplants carried out every year. There are now more than 2,500 people in the UK awaiting organs, many of them are children.

Carol reckons that if it wasn't for the "fantastic" support provided by the Freeman Hospital transplant co-ordinator Lynn Holt she would not have been able to achieve what she has achieved. Inspired by Lynn she has thrown herself into the annual round of transplant games, becoming manager of the Freeman kids team.

"Its not just about children competing, that is actually just a small part of it, the rest is social. It is a chance to get the families together because they think they are the only ones to go through this."

Kaylee is very keen on being treated the same as anyone else.

"I wouldn't say I was different, I do everything that everyone else does," she says.

She admits she can't remember the fuss over her fifth anniversary but remembers being in the papers back in 1997 when she celebrated the 10th anniversary of the transplant.

Her best friend, Emma Thompson from Stokesley, North Yorkshire, is another heart transplant recipient, which underlines Kaylee's awareness of her special status.

"I love going to the transplant games because it means I can hang around with my friends around the country who have had transplants, have a laugh and win some medals. I've got quite a lot now."

Like most 15-year-olds, Kaylee is more interested in having fun with her mates than talking about the future.

But if pressed she says she is interested in health and social care at school because she would like to work as a nursery nurse when she is older.

"I love kids, I want a few when I grow up," says Kaylee

And what does mum think about her eldest daughter?

"She's an absolute star when she behaves herself but not when she doesn't tidy her room. It's like a pigsty sometimes!"

* You can find out more about joining the Organ Donor register by ringing 0845 6060400 or visiting the ODR website at www.uktransplant.org.uk