Jamie Inglis undergoes pioneering stem cell treatment

10:06am Saturday 29th September 2012 in News By Kate Liptrot, kate.liptrot@thepress.co.uk

Jamie Inglis smiles from his hospital bed in Germany

JAMIE INGLIS would love to join the children in the colourful playroom on the other side of the hospital corridor.

He would like to play with his new friend, Ryan, who he has painted a picture for and who has waved at him from the doorway but who wasnt allowed to come in. He would like to spend longer looking for spiders outside.

Instead, to guard against possible infection and to stay near to medical treatment, the seven-year-old spends every day in the sunny bedroom that could belong to any boy if it wasnt for the drip, monitors and medical equipment standing alongside his Batman posters, bright paintings, action models and cuddly toys.

Jamie has a little more freedom than a few weeks ago when, for a month, he was kept in isolation in a sealed room, which his parents had to be disinfected and wear gowns to enter.

Now, as long as he puts on a mask and a hat to protect him from the cold, he is allowed to slowly pad through the hospital corridors on legs weak from not walking, and travel the short distance to the hospital-owned Elternhaus where his parents, Vicky and John, are staying close to the childrens hospital in Tubingen, near Stuttgart.

Jamie is undergoing pioneering treatment that could save his life, but which is unavailable in the UK. The medical trial, led by world expert Professor Peter Lang and his colleagues, has seen Johns stem cells transplanted into his sons system in order to create a new immune system to help his body fight the cancer he was first diagnosed with at the age of three and which returned this year.

There can be fewer more charming children than Jamie, whose beaming smile wins the hearts of everyone he meets, from his nurses to the hospital teacher.

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Jamie Inglis undergoes pioneering stem cell treatment