Transplant child had a premonition of operation
Paul told mum to pack bags hours before call from hospital
By Clare Weir

The mother of a little Londonderry boy who had a life-saving heart
transplant has told how he had an amazing premonition of his impending
operation.
Paul Donnelly's intuition echoed that of the donor, eight-year-old
Nicole Black, who drew a picture of a heart on her last day at Richmount
Primary School before she died.
Four-year-old Paul, from Ballymagroarty in the city, is now back home
delighting everyone with the speed of his recovery.

And his mother Bella has revealed how the youngster urged her to pack
their bags just hours before she got the call to go to Freeman Hospital
in Newcastle Upon Tyne, as a donor had been found.
Nicole, from Portadown, died after hitting her head while playing in the
garden.
After being told there was little hope, Nicole's brave family decided to
offer up her organs for transplant so that others would have a chance to
live.

Incredibly, during her last day at Richmount Primary School before the
tragedy, Nicole drew a picture of a heart and wrote accompanying words:
"Beat, beat, my heart beats inside me all the time to show I am alive".
"It just seems like this was meant to be," her mum Barbara recently told
the Belfast Telegraph.
"She also wore a wee heart-shaped locket that a friend gave her.

"To know that those who received organs, including her heart, are doing
well will help us through this."
Speaking this week on the amazing coincidence, Paul's mum Bella said:
"On the night of June 14, Paul took his bag out and started packing and
he told me that he was going to get a new heart.
"I said 'I know you are' but he kept telling me to pack my bags because
we were going to the hospital.

"The very next morning we got the call. He just seemed to know."
The youngster, who recently turned four, suffers from dilated
cardiomyopathy - an incurable enlargement of the heart.

Before the operation, he had already been fitted with two pacemakers and
had a weak immune system.