A NEW mum has been placed on the super-urgent transplant list for a new heart and is currently attached to a huge machine to keep her alive.

Amy Ellis, 19, from Allerton, faces the major surgery to treat the same condition which has taken a devastating toll on her family. 

She is currently receiving treatment at Wythenshawe Hospital, Manchester, and will hopefully receive her new heart within the next month, but said she is still “wrapping her head around” the journey she faces.

Amy has dilated cardiomyopathy - the condition many of her family also have - and has been on tablets for much of her life to keep it at bay. 

It is a disease of the heart muscle, where it becomes stretched and thin. 

This means it is unable to pump blood around the body effectively.

Amy’s ordeal began while she was pregnant earlier this year and at 32 weeks, she was told she would have to stay in hospital until her baby arrived as she was “very poorly” and would need a pacemaker. 

While Amy was due to give birth on June 21 via caesarean section, her baby had to be delivered three days early because she was so unwell.

She said: “Doctors came to me on the 17th and said if they didn’t bring Ivy the next day I wouldn’t have made it, my body was too weak my heart was failing massively.”

Just two days later, she had her pacemaker fitted but was eventually able to start enjoying life as a doting new mum.

But after six weeks, Amy became very poorly once again. 

She was unable to eat or keep food down, could barely drink water and was sleeping all day. 

At first, it was thought she had blood clots, but she then received the awful news that her heart had started to fail.

She was taken into intensive care at Wythenshawe and monitored 24-hours a day, but then had to be rushed to theatre to have a life-saving biventricular assist device fitted.

Amy said: “I just don’t remember anything else, the next thing I woke up with four wires sticking out of my chest pumping my blood around my body for me, keeping me alive.

“When I say it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever been through I mean it.

“I was originally on the urgent heart transplant list as my heart wasn’t good, but it was still doing it’s job, but now it’s not working at all.

“There’s a machine on both sides pumping it to keep me alive - now I am on the super urgent heart transplant list waiting to get a new heart.”

She added: “It’s so hard not being able to do anything for myself not being able to walk and being attached to a huge machine keeping me alive.

“I’m still wrapping my head around it but the people I have around me have made it so much easier.”

Despite the difficulties she has faced, Amy said her strong family network, her fiancé Charlie, who she became engaged to last week, and her “beautiful little girl” have been a huge source of support.

She said: “They have all carried me through this hard path - there’s still a long way to go to recover from the major new heart but I’m going to smash it with them all by my side.”