A grieving Dundee family have paid tribute to their “brave” daughter who has died age 35 from a rare condition.
Sara Craighead, a former pupil at Forthill Primary and Grove Academy in Broughty Ferry, passed away suddenly on Friday in her mother’s arms after suffering breathing problems.
Sara had been battling the condition paraganglioma which affects only around 200 people in the UK every year and only very rarely leads to death for more than 10 years.
Despite the condition, her father Syd says her death was a huge shock to him and his wife Helen, both 60, and brother Ian, 31.
“We are devastated,” Syd said last night. “As far as we can tell, she is the only person in the country to have died from it, out of 60 million people.
“We had no reason to think there was anything wrong. She had a wee bit of trouble breathing but that has happened before with the condition.
“On this occasion we went through and she was having severe difficulties. She put her head on her mum’s shoulder and sadly she passed away.”
Syd added: “It started more than 10 years ago when she went to get her eyes tested and something strange was spotted. She was referred to the eye clinic at Ninewells and they referred her to the ear, nose and throat unit where a tumour was spotted coming out of her ear and also behind the ear.
“She underwent a 14-hour operation to remove it. But after a period it started to grow again. It was removed again and she had 26 doses of radiotherapy which the doctors said would be 10-15 years before they would have to do anything with it again.”
But Syd said: “A later X-ray showed that there were more tumours on the outside of her lungs related to the ones on her neck and the doctors said they couldn’t do anything with them because even if she got a double lung transplant, because the host tumour was still there, it would just spread to the new lungs.”
Syd added; “I have the greatest respect for her consultant Hannah Lord. She did look after Sara very well, as did all the staff at the cancer clinic.”
Despite her debilitating condition, Sara battled on bravely.
“She had started singing in St Mary’s Episcopal Church in Broughty Ferry at the age of seven and she was head chorister for a while,” her dad said. “She continued there until it got too much for her.”
A service of celebration of Sara’s life is to be held in St Mary’s Episcopal Church on Friday at noon.