GOLDEN girls Christine Dempsey and Lauren Leach are celebrating after picking up five gold medals and two bronze between them at the transplant games.

It was the first games for Christine, 16, of Whalley Drive, Rawtenstall, who had a liver transplant at Birmingham Children's Hospital last July.

She said: "I had a form of hepatitis they had not seen before and Burnley General referred me to Birmingham. They put me on the transplant list and a donor was found within a couple of weeks."

Christine spent 11 days in hospital and about three months recuperating. The transplant came in the middle of her GCSE exams at St Hilda's RC School, Burnley, so she was unable to complete all the courses.

She is planning to study for A-levels at St Theodore's Sixth Form and hopes to become a paediatric nurse.

Christine said: "I would appeal for everyone to carry a donor card. I am alive because someone donated their organs. "It was good to go to the games and see all these people who had also had a transplant and were just getting on with life and being perfectly normal."

This year the 21st transplant games were held in Belfast and Christine won gold in ball throwing and bronze in 50m backstroke.

Lauren Leach was one of the stars of the games in Belfast scooping gold in 15m running, 25m breast stroke, 25m freestyle and the obstacle race. She also notched up a bronze in the long jump.

Lauren, nine, lives at Ighten Road, Burnley, with parents Jean and Jack and older brother Adam. Last year she entered her first British Transplant Games and won three gold medals.

At just nine months old Lauren was desperately ill. She was diagnosed in Burnley General Hospital with a rare genetic condition which caused sclerosis of the liver and in 1990 she had a liver transplant at Birmingham.

Lauren and Christine helped the 12 children aged eight to 17 from the hospital retain the title Best Children's Team.

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