A grief-stricken widow has been awarded £115,000 agreed damages after the death of her husband.

But she said no amount of money could compensate for her family's loss.

Mother-of-four May Seymour, 44, of Coppins Road, Clacton, said: "No amount of money could compensate for the loss of a life and especially my husband."

Her husband, Peter, a self-employed roofer who had been her childhood sweetheart, underwent surgery in March 1995 to remove a pituitary tumour from behind his face. He never awoke and died, aged 43, nearly three months later.

The hearing at the High Court in London yesterday heard Mrs Seymour had not brought the case in order to win compensation but to highlight what she considered were inadequacies in her husband's treatment.

Speaking from her home after the hearing, Mrs Seymour said her husband was ""very much a family man who idolised the children and whose life revolved around his family"

She added: "You could not get a better dad."

The couple had four children, aged six, 15, 20 and 21 at the time of Mr Seymour's death.

Robert Glancy QC, Mrs Seymour's counsel, told yesterday's hearing Mr Seymour, a fit and active man who worked hard for his family, first suffered symptoms in 1991 in the form of headaches.

Later he complained of blurred vision and blind spots. Doctors first suspected he was suffering from glaucoma.

But after that was ruled out Mr Glancy said doctors "failed to seek an explanation for his continuing symptoms".

He attended Clacton Hospital and Essex County Hospital on various occasions in 1991, 1992 and 1993 but the presence of a tumour was not discovered.

By the end of 1994, Mr Seymour's condition was deteriorating, but even when his GP referred him to hospital as an emergency case in the autumn of that year, it was three months before he was given an appointment.

He was finally operated on in March 1995, but never awoke after surgery and died.

Mr Glancy said it was his case the doctors had done "absolutely nothing" to exclude a tumour as a possible cause of Mr Seymour's condition.

Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust agreed to settle the claim without making any admission of liability.

Michael Horne, for the NHS Trust, said the settlement represented a "compromise" figure. He said the NHS Trust nevertheless felt "very sincere regret and sympathy" over Mr Seymour's death.

Judge Richard Walker told Mrs Seymour: "This is indeed a very sad case. No sum of money is ever appropriate in the face of the loss of a very good man, but the law has to do the best it can."

Mrs Seymour said since her husband's death the family had got by "helping each other". She said: "We have tried to pull together."

As to the future, they took each day at a time.

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