BRAVE great-grandmother Olive Durrington – who recently became the nation’s oldest patient to undergo pioneering heart surgery – has spent the Easter weekend happily with her family.

Last week, the Macclesfield Express told how Olive, 88, had broken records when she underwent a "keyhole" heart operation previously offered to younger people.

Grandmother-of-two Olive, of Clay Heyes Road, Chelford, said she was now looking forward to getting back to baking cakes and treats for the church, and shopping when the weather gets fairer.

She was diagnosed with a "sticky valve" (aortic stenosis) in 2007 and it deteriorated until January, this year, when she was unable to walk across the room without becoming totally breathless.

Surgical experts told Olive she was too old to have open heart surgery because of the risks and recovery time, but she was offered a keyhole procedure – a much less intrusive operation.

Since that pioneering procedure – called transcatheter aortic valve implantation, where a tube was fed into her heart through a small hole in her groin – at Wythenshawe Hospital on February 25, she said her breathing has been "wonderful".

She said: "I’ve always done a lot of baking with a friend, which I’m looking forward to getting back to. I make a lot of pineapple loaves and coconut macaroons for church refreshments, and things like that."

She spent the Easter weekend with her daughter Joan and their family for a classic Sunday roast.

Olive, whose husband Ray, a former soldier, died at 52 in the 70s, said: "I’m feeling really good actually. I’m just getting over a chest infection, but since the operation, the breathing is wonderful. It really is."

But the brave former volunteer carer admitted: "I was scared before I went to have the operation. In fact, I was pertrified, but didn’t tell the family. The consultants at Macclesfield Hospital gave me all the (medical) literature to read, which I read two or three times, and so did my daughter (Joan), and decided just to go for it."

Her daughter Joan Durrington, of Millbank Close, Chelford, who has two sons, Robert, 36, and Andrew, 34, said: "It’s amazing. Twenty four hours after the surgery she was sitting up in bed having breakfast, and was out the day after that, walking around.  She’s already started doing the washing up again!"

Olive, who hails from Newcastle originally, and moved to Cheshire in the 1940s, was full of praise, along with Joan, for those who took care of her.

She said: "I just want to say thanks to all the doctors and nurses at Wythenshawe who looked after me. They were really first class. I really enjoyed my stay, actually."

A spokesman for the NHS said: "Olive has benefitted from a technique which would normally not be available to her because of her age and frailty.  But she truly is a pioneer. She tells us that if it weren’t for her rheumatism, she would be as fit as a fiddle!"