The three-year-old faces a daily battle against a host of conditions, including chronic lung disease and having no immunity system.

The Mail went to visit Taylor at Newcastle's Royal Victoria Infirmary to see just how she copes for the eight months of the year she's there.

Her latest visit included a marathon six hours of treatment with doctors spending the first five hours filling up her body intravenously with antibodies to top up her immunity system, which is almost non-existent.

They then spent the next hour passing a saline solution through her system to make sure all the intravenous lines which feed her are clear.

But Taylor is not fazed by this at all. "It doesn't bother her," says her mum Nichola Groom, 21. "She will happily sit and watch a DVD and not budge through the whole thing."

The youngster has been through this a dozen times or more times in her short life.

"When she is finished, she always tells people 'the hospital has got me mended again'," says Nichola.

Yet astonishingly, the youngster has anything but hospital procedures on her mind. She is full of excitement.

Bright-eyed Taylor has been told the man from the Hartlepool Mail is coming to see her in hospital.

The three-year-old, who lives in the Dyke House area of Hartlepool, proudly declares: "It's my photoshoot."

"She's getting used to this," says Nichola. "She's turning into a little star."

Mum casts a loving look towards her daughter. She reveals how Taylor's brush with fame has proved a real tonic for the toddler.

"She told me she wanted her hair straightened for the Mail coming.

She's never asked for that before," said her smiling mum.

It is a light-hearted moment which masks a sombre truth. Taylor is destined to spend most of her life at the RVI where she has already had 12 operations.

She is on a daily supply of oxygen to cope with chronic lung disease. She also has no immune system to fight off infections.