KATY Rossiter was a normal 45-year-old woman working for her husband's yachting business.

Then one day she was told she had a hole in her heart the size of a 50 pence piece.

The months that followed were to be a life-changing experience for the mother of four from Bartley in the New Forest.

It has meant that she now devotes much of her time to the charity Wessex Heartbeat, without which she says she would not be here today.

The experience has also moved her to change her will and ensure she leaves a legacy to the charity as a thank-you.

The problem started in 1982 in Australia when Katy suffered a massive stroke.

"But after I recovered I did not think much about it," she said. "At the time it was just a case of getting on with it.

"Then when I was 45 I started having palpitations. It felt like I could not control it so I decided to have it checked out. I went to the doctor and he put me on a 24-hour heart monitor. I probably would not have agreed to it if I had not had that stroke.

"All it showed was that I had a regular irregularity. But I was not happy so I went back to my doctor and asked if I could see a specialist. He agreed and I was given a trans-oesophageal cardiogram."

It was then that the real complications started. She said: "They lifted a flap of skin in my heart and the hole was huge. Nobody had seen it before. It was the size of a 50p piece between the left and right atrium.

"Imagine you have silk and it is frayed. If you try and stitch it you just get a hole somewhere else. Well the tissue around the hole was just like that and it meant they could not perform open-heart surgery. It was a problem I had since I was born but I did not know about it."

During the four-hour operation that followed at Southamp-ton General Hospital, cardio-logist Dr Tony Salmon used pioneering treatment, that he had helped to bring to this country.

A miniature device, resembling two linked umbrellas with the nickname angel's wings was to be used to plug the hole

A catheter was inserted into a vein in Katy's leg, and then the angel's wings fed through the catheter up to the heart.

Then Dr Salmon triggered a mechanism, which unfurled the umbrellas like a flower and anchored them either side of the hole in the heart.

Katy said: "Dr Salmon is my hero, I cannot tell you how grateful I am to him. These little devices cost thousands of pounds and would not have been possible without the work of Wessex Heartbeat.

"It was an amazing operation and now I've been fixed."

Katy, now 47, combines fundraising with her work for her husband's yachting company Rossiter Yachts.

The work by charities such as Wessex Heartbeat, Wessex Cancer and Hope is often only possible thanks to the legacies, which constitute a third of the annual income for these charities.

Since 1997 no inheritance tax can be levied against a legacy left to charity in a will and all these charities would ask you to consider them after the family has been remembered.

l To find out more about the legacy campaign visit the website at www.wessexwills.org.uk.