MP returns to officially open hospital unit that cured him of blood cancer

Tory MP Nick Boles says the unit let him live at home during treatment

A Tory MP who was the first patient treated in a hospital’s new blood cancer unit returned to perform its official opening after being declared cancer-free.

Nick Boles was last year cured of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma by King’s College hospital, a decade after undergoing treatment for the rarer Hodgkin’s form of the disease. Yesterday Mr Boles, 52, who lives in Camberwell, returned to King’s in Denmark Hill to open the Leukaemia UK Ambulatory Care Unit, which allows blood cancer patients to receive stem cell transplants and chemotherapy as outpatients.

This enables them to live at home or in a nearby hotel without admission to a ward, reducing the risk of infection and saving the NHS money.

While receiving chemotherapy last year Mr Boles was pictured leaving King’s in a wheelchair and wearing a facemask to go and vote in Parliament for a government Bill to leave the EU.

The unit started work last year and Mr Boles said: “Being offered the chance to be its first patient made a huge difference to my quality of life during my stem cell transplant, allowing me to live at home and come in each day for tests and treatment. It’s a great step forward.”

He quit the race to become the Tories’ London mayoral candidate in 2008 on being diagnosed with lymphoma for the first time.

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