A SEVEN-YEAR-OLD girl who battled a rare illness which meant she couldn't eat real food has died. Caitlin Cameron had to be fed through a drip for 12 hours every night of her short life after being born with a condition thought to affect only a few people worldwide.

Today her grieving family paid tribute to the courageous youngster who they affectionately called the pink princess' - pink after her favourite colour and princess because of her love of Disney characters.

And they told how Caitlin smiled through all her troubles, even at the end when she was in intensive care in a London hospital for eight weeks.

Dad Richard, 38, said: "She couldn't talk because she was on a ventilator. We didn't hear her voice for the last eight weeks but she still blew you a kiss and mouthed I love you'.

"The way everybody will remember Caitlin was that she was a fighter. She was very brave, she was a wee bit cheeky and she said what she thought.

"But she smiled through everything. She was very much a Disney princess girl and loved having her picture taken with four princesses at Disneyland."

Mum Kelly, 32, said: "She was a happy-go-lucky girl. A real pink princess."

Caitlin, who was born with auto-immune entropathy, which left her unable to digest food, was so popular in her home village of Cardross near Dumbarton that it was standing room only at her funeral.

The service had Disney music and a Disney-themed order of service. And everyone who attended wore pink.

Despite spending much of her early years in Glasgow's Yorkhill Hospital, Caitlin had lived a relatively normal life, attending St Joseph's Primary in Helensburgh and going on holidays to Disney parks in Florida and Paris.

Her body had even begun to tolerate tiny amounts of her favourite jelly sweets.

Richard said: "Officially she wasn't able to eat anything at all but she did eat tiny little bits of crisps, bread, toast and jelly sweets. She could have them and tolerate them but the doctors could not quite understand that.

"Haribo sweets were her favourites. Every night the ice cream van came and she used to get a 10p mix - but she could only eat about one sweet."

Three months ago her mum took her to Yorkhill with a swollen tummy.

Doctors discovered she had veno-occlusive disease which affected the blood vessels in her liver and sent her to specialists at King's College Hospital.

Caitlin battled on bravely for eight weeks in intensive care but died on May 9 from organ failure with her dad, mum and her big sister Naomi, 10, at her side.

Richard, who works for a wine company, said: "Caitlin had been doing really well. She was just a normal kid apart from the fact she had more time off than others for hospital appointments, and she had spells when she wasn't well."

The Evening Times first told Caitlin's inspiring story when she was just 18 months old. She spent nearly a whole year in Yorkhill Hospital and before her second birthday she had already a dozen operations to put in and remove her feeding line.

Kelly said she knew there was something wrong before Caitlin was even born.

She said in 2001: "I felt I wasn't getting the right amount of kicks throughout the course of the pregnancy; I always felt as though something wasn't right.

"She hadn't been taking in the nutrition she needed even when she was in the womb."

Caitlin became a familiar face to staff at Yorkhill who loved to look after her.

Her parents had hoped to get her back to the Glasgow hospital after her treatment in London but sadly Caitlin never made it.

Richard said: "We had phone calls nearly every night from the staff at Yorkhill to see how she was doing." Timesfile

LITTLE Caitlin Cameron suffered from auto immune entropathy, a very rare condition thought to affect just a handful of people in the world.

Caitlin was unable to digest any food but instead had to get the nourishment her body needed from a substance called Total Parental Nutrition.

Mum Kelly, her devoted full-time carer, learned how to hook her up to a drip at 8pm every night and unhook her next morning at 8am.

Thanks to her, Caitlin was able to live a relatively normal life instead of being confined to hospital.

The auto-immune disease caused the cells of Caitlin's immume system to attack her gut and made it reject solid food.

If Caitlin did eat, her body would react with sickness and diarrhoea. Latterly, her dad says, she did manage tiny pieces of food such as a small jelly sweet.

The youngster had to take a cocktail of drugs, including steroids and immune supressants daily to control the disease.