A MOTHER preparing to donate a kidney to her daughter so she can live a normal life last night said it could bring them even closer together.

Nicola Andrews has agreed that doctors can use one of her kidneys to give to daughter Alice after tests showed she would be a good match.

Six year-old Alice was born without any kidneys and requires lengthy dialysis treatment three times a week at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI).

Doctors had failed to find a perfect match for Alice, who has to be fed through a tube in her stomach.

Ms Andrews, 36, from Templeton Close, Hartlepool, said the transplant operation had been scheduled for October.

She said: "I am really excited, but it is scary at the same time. We are all looking forward to this, and hopefully things will improve for the better. Alice has been on the waiting list for a kidney for three years and at the start, we did not realise it would take so long.

"She has got quite a rare tissue type and the wait has been a lot longer than we anticipated."

Alice's father, George Skinner, was also tested to see if he was a match, but the results were negative.

The family had been told that Alice was running out of options after her dialysis tube dislodged for the fourth time, with few available veins left to put it in.

Ms Andrews said she had spoken to Alice, a pupil at Clavering Primary School, about the operation, which will take place in separate hospitals.

Alice will be in hospital for two weeks at the RVI, while her mother will undergo keyhole surgery at the Freeman Hospital, in Newcastle.

Mrs Andrews said: "She is such a character. Everyone round here knows her. She knows exactly what is going on because I have told her.

"There does seem to be some sort of special bond there which I have been told of by other people because of what you go through together."

Should the operation be successful and Alice's body accepts the kidney, she could be off dialysis treatment in six months and be able to eat normally.