My leukaemia cure: a month in a hotel
Published: November 20, 2005
Michael Durham’s pioneering NHS treatment for his leukaemia involved a luxurious alternative to a hospital ward.
The calendar on the wall was deceptive. It was an October day, but it felt like June. The temperature was a balmy 70F and the sky was blue. From my window I could see office workers sipping skinny lattes in pavement cafes and couples strolling arm in arm. But that was all I could do that day — look. I was trapped indoors, missing out on the Indian summer, hooked up to an intravenous drip.
I’d been lying on a hospital bed all day while dangerous chemicals, intended to destroy my immune system, trickled into my veins. At last, well after midnight and nearly 13 hours after my ordeal began, I was told I could go back to my bed. I felt weary, sore and fed up. So it was with enormous relief that I padded back to my room and saw a familiar and comforting shape in the bed — my wife.
For a week I’d been undergoing treatment for leukaemia — the very next day I’d have a bone marrow transplant — and throughout the ordeal my wife Bobbie had been at my side. [Bone Marrow Transplants : A Guide for Cancer Patients and Their Families]
Not by my bed mopping my fevered brow but, for much of the time, tucked up beside me in a queen-size bed in a luxury hotel. Had she wished she could have ordered me a snack from room service or selected a gin and tonic for herself from the minibar.
It’s a far cry from life on a hospital ward. But as the recipient of the latest in bone marrow transplant techniques I have been a lucky pioneer in a cancer revolution set to take place in Britain — ambulatory care or the “hotel option”.
University College hospital (UCH) in central London is one of a handful of cancer centres in the world offering the option to selected patients, and the only one in the UK. The idea is simple, safe and surprisingly good value for money.
Instead of lying all day on a ward taking up a valuable National Health Service bed and at risk of falling sick with MRSA or any other passing infection, I stayed for nearly a month at the four- star Radisson Edwardian Grafton hotel, 30 yards from the hospital, in a spacious room of my own with a view of the BT tower.
While I got the life-saving treatment I needed, most of the time I looked after myself and wasn’t a drain on precious NHS resources.
I could eat out and spend time as I pleased. Had anything gone wrong, medical staff and the full expertise of one of the world’s great hospitals were only a few yards and a phone call away.
Up to six transplant patients at any time can currently be offered the hotel option at UCH, but the idea is set to expand. The NHS trust is currently looking for funding for a new £40m ambulatory cancer care centre to be built on a vacant site next to the hospital.
Perhaps it’s a logical step. We already live in a takeaway culture where you can phone for a pizza, dial up a Thai green curry or rent the latest DVD. Why not “take out” cancer care, at the patient’s own convenience, too?
Professor Tony Goldstone, consultant in haematology at UCH and director of the north London cancer network, who has devised the scheme, thinks there are benefits. Happier patients, he says, probably recover faster. “The great thing about the hotel is that it is a great improvement to the quality of patients’ lives,” he says.
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