I was so scared it was a tumour

Brave Sara Payne tells of brain op hell

By Amanda Evans

BRAVE Sara Payne has spoken from her hospital bed of her terrifying life-or-death brain operation.

The crusading mum of murdered eight-year-old Sarah was rushed to hospital suffering from crippling head pains.

Worried doctors put her in intensive care after discovering the 39-year-old anti-paedophile campaigner had an aneurysm— the same condition that paralysed her late father.

“I was scared it was a brain tumour,” said a still-dazed Sara as she slowly recovers from a three-and-a-half-hour op to seal the bleeding blood vessel in her head.

Her eyes heavy from doses of morphine and sporting a heavily-stitched curved red scar on her forehead, Sara recalled how her nightmare began 11 days ago.

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“I was in bed when this headache came like somebody had battered the back of my head. I was holding my head crying. I was on the floor and being sick,” she said.

“Eventually I fell asleep and then slept pretty much most of the next two days. By Saturday I felt better.”

But on Sunday it came back, and worried Sara—whose daughter was killed by convicted paedophile Roy Whiting eight years ago—went to casualty.

She said: “I told the nurse my eyes were hurting so much because of the light.

Agony

“She immediately became concerned and put me in a dark cubicle. She said I should have a scan.”
In the darkness, the worst case scenarios—including the possibility of cancer—raced through Sara’s mind.

Her agony was made worse by the knowledge that her father Brian Williams—who died last year—had been left paralysed by an aneurysm at 55.

“Because of my family history, I was very frightened. I try to avoid doctors at all costs—they never tell you anything good,” she said.

“All kinds of things went through my head about what it could have been—including a tumour.”

Doctors rushed the mum-of-four into intensive care at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London.

Within hours she was in the operating theatre after it was confirmed that a swollen blood vessel in her head had bled into her brain. Surgeons battled to insert a tiny clip to seal the aneurysm without damaging the main artery.

When Sara came round her first thoughts were for her children Lee, 17, Luke, 15, Charlotte, 10 and Ellie, four—and her courageous Sarah’s Law campaign to give parents the right to know if paedophiles are living near them.

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She will spend another week in hospital before 10 days of convalescence at home.

Still desperately pale, weak and unable to open her bruised right eye, Sara has nevertheless been keeping in touch with the campaign by email.

“I’ve worked too hard and too long for it to fall down now,” she said. “I just want to hit the ground running when I get out of here.”.