This Blaze Reminds Us Just How Precious the NHS

By ED VICTOR

THE devastating fire at the Royal Marsden Hospital was upsetting for anyone to watch. But when I first saw the pictures of the flames on the BBC website, my heart sank. For I bear a heavy debt to its consultants and nurses, having been treated there for a form of leukaemia.

The Royal Marsden’s staff are heroes and heroines it’s as simple as that.

A disaster like this reminds us all just how lucky we are to have such dedicated medical professionals working here in central London.

I first walked through the Royal Marsden’s doors in 2003; I had been diagnosed in November 1999 with chronic lymphocytic leukaemia. There I met my new haemotologist, Professor Daniel Catovsky. It was and is a fiercely NHS establishment: when I gave the person taking down my details my GP’s address in Harley Street, he rolled his eyes.

But the fact that I was a private patient made absolutely no difference to the excellence of the care I received, either then or in 2004, when I ended up spending longer there.

One morning while on a business trip to the US, I realised I couldn’t see out of my right eye. I called a friend in LA, who sent me to an opthomologist; he sent me for a scan which revealed that lymphocytes had attacked my right optic nerve. I flew back to London in a hurry and went to Moorfields Eye Hospital: the consultant examined my eye and cheerfully opined: "Good Lord, I haven’t seen a case like this since 1983." Sometimes when you’re ill, it helps to have an interesting problem.

Then I went back to the Marsden.

Over three months they gave me six doses of chemotherapy which they had to put into my spine by lumbar puncture. It really hurt. But what I remember most was the nurses who held my hand and rubbed my head as I endured this incredibly painful procedure.

It sounds a cliche, but they really were like angels it seemed they really did feel my pain, and that helped a lot. I was so impressed with the passion with which they did their job.

I also soon saw their incredibly quick, professional response to a crisis.

I had to spend a night there when Royal Marsden’s they first gave me rituximab, a very powerful drug. The first time, it has to be administered in hospital because you can have strange reactions.

The nurses started the drip off, then increased it, then increased it again. And suddenly I felt like someone had picked me up and thrown me off the deck of a ship in the North Atlantic in January I have never felt so cold. I shivered uncontrollably. People raced into the room and started turning things off: it was a crisis, I felt terrible, yet I still felt happy to be in their care. They exuded confidence. The shivering lasted 10 minutes, my wife told me afterwards although to me it felt like 10 hours.

And then when I came back for chemotherapy as a day patient, I discovered more of the tremendous bond between staff and patients, as well as between patients themselves.

For these chemo treatments you go to what is called the Day Room and sit on a green couch, alongside everyone from 18-year-old kids to 90-something grannies all connected to drips.

There is an intense feeling that you’re all in it together and that you just have to deal with it. And that is the spirit that pervades the whole hospital.

On a later occasion, I developed pneumonia and was rushed back into the Marsden. On my second evening there, a consultant came in and introduced himself: I recognised him as John Diamond’s doctor. John had been treated at the Royal Marsden for cancer of the tongue before succumbing to the disease in 2001; he was married to one of my clients, as a literary agent, Nigella Lawson.

The consultant handed me a message from Nigella. I opened it and it read: "Don’t eat the hospital food, I’m cooking supper for you.""You’re a very over-qualified messenger boy," I told him but I was glad when a soup of lentils and frankfurters arrived later.

And yet now the Royal Marsden looks like a smouldering wreck. It is admitting outpatients, but there is damage to much of the hospital’s fabric. The timing is just so cruel.

Last week I had a letter from the head of the Royal Marsden’s Cancer Campaign, which raised more than Pounds 5 million in 2006 to support the trust’s work in cancer research and treatment. She explained what an exciting time this was, with new equipment coming in and new treatments available. Now so much of that work will be disrupted.

We hear a lot of bad news stories about the health service superbugs, financial crises, targets missed.

But the Royal Marsden, an NHS hospital, is an inspiring institution. Any hospital consists of a thousand individual tragedies, yet this one is such a place of comfort.

The reaction of the staff to Wednesday’s fire showed just how dedicated and professional they are. Nobody seems to have panicked; the TV pictures showed them calmly evacuating the building, even though the place they had given so much to was burning around them.

Consultant Fiona MacNeill told this paper that she was operating when the alarm was sounded, but she went ahead and completed the operation.

Her comment sums up the staff ‘s professionalism: "To be honest, this was just another emergency." Thankfully, few of us ever need to use the Royal Marsden’s services, so it’s easy to forget what an asset it is and the fantastic job that its staff do. It takes a crisis like this week’s fire or the personal crisis of falling seriously ill to make us realise how lucky we are to have such an amazing hospital and research centre working here in the heart of our city..

To make a donation to the Royal Marsden’s Cancer Campaign, visit www.royalmarsden.org/campaign

(c) 2008 Evening Standard; London (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.