A young family were told their daughter was "hours away" from death after she suffered heart failure after catching a common cold this January - but little Lola Plimmer has been transported via helicopter to Newcastle's Freeman Hospital where she's now awaiting a life-changing heart transplant.
Lola, 18 months, caught a cold earlier this year - but the virus appears to have triggered an underlying condition and it began attacking her heart. She went into heart failure and the tot, from Stone near Stoke-on-Trent, needed cardiac massage and to be attached to an ECMO machine to save her life.
She was airlifted to Newcastle at the end of January, and underwent surgery to attach her to a state-of-the-art Berlin Heart, which operates heart function for her while she awaits a transplant, last week. Lola, and parents Ella Watt and Rob Plimmer, are now waiting alongside other incredibly poorly children for an appropriate donor heart to become available. There's no telling how long this could take.
