A Crosby man was 'blown away' by the standard of care he received after a life-saving transplant at Liverpool’s Clatterbridge Cancer Centre.
Gary Jackson, 57, said staff at the Pembroke Place hospital “went above and beyond” during the seven weeks he was an inpatient. Gary, who relapsed last September after being diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2014, was admitted to the hospital in January for a stem cell transplant.
He said: "The treatment is as intense as you can get. It’s isolation as well, because you have to be in your own room without any visitors and its very demanding physically and mentally.”
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A stem cell transplant entails replacing any unhealthy blood cells with stem cells removed from the blood or bone marrow, and usually requires patients to remain in hospital for around three weeks. However, Gary’s depleted immune system after the transplant led to him contracting an infection, which saw him temporarily transferred to the ITU at the Royal Liverpool Hospital.
Despite having to remain in hospital for a month longer than anticipated, Gary was full of praise for the staff on Clatterbridge’s ward five, as well as the ITU team at the Royal. He told the ECHO: “Everyone connected with the hospital went absolutely above and beyond to help. I was absolutely blown away.
“Every member of staff - and I’m not talking one or two here, there must have been about 30 or 40 - was just absolutely outstanding." Clatterbridge opened in June 2020 as Liverpool’s first cancer hospital, based on the same site as the new Royal Liverpool Hospital and the University of Liverpool.
The state-of-the art facility delivers a wide range of highly-specialist cancer care, but it was the humanity of the staff that really resonated with Gary. He said: "There are so many examples I could give where nothing was too much of a problem for them. One day, my phone charger broke and, you can imagine, without a mobile phone when you’re in complete isolation, it’s a nightmare.”
Gary couldn’t believe it when a member of staff volunteered to get a bus to the shops to get his phone fixed. He said: "There’s so many examples of staff that were so considerate."
The Crosby resident felt particularly compelled to share his story after feeling that the work of NHS staff “often gets taken for granted” in the city. Gary expressed his unreserved gratitude for the team on Clatterbridge’s day ward, ward five and the transplant and haematology department, who continue to monitor his condition as he goes through recovery.
He said: “A lot of people go to Clatterbridge for stem cell transplants, and it can be scary, so I just thought, if anyone out there is waiting to go through that process and is feeling apprehensive, I want to give them a bit of reassurance."
He added: “We are very lucky to have such a fantastic facility in Liverpool.”
