'It's a comfort to know my wife's organs saved lives after she died'

Beloved, midwife, wife and mum Sara Pitt was just 47 when she died from a chest infection, but her passing has transformed and even saved the lives of others.

Her devastated husband Karl has explained how Sara, who worked as a Heartlands Hospital midwife, has left a legacy that will live on forever.

 Karl, a retired teacher, said his wife of 25 years was the ‘most wonderful person.

‘Sara would get chest infections every six to nine months, and we hadn’t thought too much of it.

‘On a holiday in Spain in around 2016 Sara had to go into hospital. Doctors there thought there was scarring from an old or latent TB [tuberculosis] infection.

‘After that, steroids and antibiotics would usually clear the infections when they came.’

But as Christmas loomed two years ago, a new infection felt different to Sara, and she told her husband it was ‘not clearing’.

She spent a week in bed at home, but the health worker, who’d been with Heartlands and Solihull hospitals for almost 18 years, wanted to get back to the job she loved and look after her three children – Caitlyn, now 15, and twins Chloe and Harrison, 13.

Karl said: ‘Sara was a midwife for 18 years and she worked so hard to get there.

‘She supported countless new mums to bring new life into the world, and she did all of this while raising our children.’

Karl was at work in a Wolverhampton school when his daughter called to say that an ambulance was on its way to get Sara as her chest was getting worse.

The widower rushed to be wife’s side, and he could tell she was ‘really struggling.

‘After two days she had become so weak.

‘The doctors said that her struggling for breath was sapping her energy and putting her organs under strain, so they recommended placing Sara in an induced coma to support her breathing and organs and hopefully improve her condition.

‘Sara and I agreed and we said goodbye. We did think she would recover well.’

But after five days in hospital, it became clear that nothing more could be done to help her, and she wasn’t going to get better.

‘We had been looking forward to Christmas with the kids as you do,’ Karl recalled.

‘Sara was compassionate. She talked straight. She always gave you time and you appreciated that. Sara was well-respected and honest, and she had so much empathy. She connected with everybody.

‘At Sara’s funeral, we could not get everyone in the room. People had to wait outside.

‘But whoever it was, be them a nurse, doctor, consultant, midwife, even students who came, they said that she was wonderful and the best they had ever worked with. I’ve no doubt that she was.

‘Some months later I received a letter to tell me that four of Sara’s organs had gone on to save or change the lives of other people. There is no question this was a help for us. It meant a lot to know that after helping so many in life she was able to help so many in death.

‘It is important to be registered on the organ donor register. To know Sara’s donation saved or made other lives easier is something we will never ever regret as a family.’

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