A YORK College student has told of her joy after being given a new heart earlier this year – aged just 17.

Musical theatre student Amelia Annear says it “just feels amazing” after her successful transplant surgery.

“I feel like a little kid again,” she said. “It’s like a new lease of life. It is like being given a second chance.”

Amelia, of Knaresborough, said that as she trains and gets herself back to physical fitness following the operation in February, her aim is to be able to dance again.

She said she had always been a “really energetic person” but, in 2019, she started feeling really lethargic.

“I had been feeling a bit ill since October that year and I started having heart palpitations,” she said.

“Sometimes it felt like my heart was beating out of my chest.

“One morning in late February 2020, I was making my breakfast and the next thing I remember was waking up on the kitchen floor with my dad shouting my name. Doctors told me I had heart failure.”

She had to put her studies on hold, including giving up the lead in the show she was rehearsing for, and spent time in and out of hospital during 2020, unable at times to see her parents because of the pandemic. She was eventually told that she would need a heart transplant.

“Covid made everything very difficult and there were times when my parents couldn’t visit me in hospital,” she said.

“I was really relieved that I was able to get a heart and to have survived the transplant.

“I do think I will be able to dance again. I’ve been training myself and getting myself back to physical fitness. I just have to warm up a lot slower!

“I would quite like to go on and do acting for a degree and then see where that takes me in the big wide world.”

Amelia, now 18, said she had been given the chance to find out about her donor and she decided to write a letter to thank their family.

“They’ve quite literally saved my life by choosing to donate organs. As my letter got sent off, I got one back from the family telling me more about my donor, which was so comforting to hear.

“We are so alike and share a lot of the same interests. It was amazing the likenesses and interests that we have and I wanted to make the family aware that I wasn’t going to waste the gift that they have given me. I’ve been given something amazing.”

Amelia spoke out as a report published today by NHS Blood and Transplant showed that despite the strains Covid put on the NHS over the last year, 271 people in Yorkshire still had their lives saved by an organ transplant.

It said that in total, 3,391 people in the UK had their lives saved, thanks to 1,180 people donating their organs after death.

Medical director John Forsythe said the past year was unprecedented in the NHS’s history, so the fact that 271 people in Yorkshire received an organ transplant was “amazing”.

However, he added: “We mustn’t forget there are still thousands of people in need of lifesaving organ transplants and we are doing our utmost to work with clinical teams and donor families to try and close the gap between those receiving a transplant and those still waiting.”