A FUN day was held at the weekend to thank staff at the Royal Bournemouth Hospital for saving a dad’s life.

Family and friends of father-of-three Sean Luff, who is recovering from cancer treatment and pneumonia, were joined by local residents at the fundraiser at Bournemouth Electric Club in Broadway Lane.

There was a spirited Elvis impersonator, bouncy castle and children’s games, a fire engine, ferret racing, raffle, silent auction and various other entertainments, with cash going to the RBH’s new cancer care unit.

The event was arranged by Mr Luff’s parents Pete and Teresa, and sisters Sarah and Rachel, and as an added bonus he was able to attend himself.

“This is to say thank you to the staff in the intensive care and high dependency wards, ward 11 and the physios, they have all treated me exceptionally well,” he said.

“It is quite unusual for people to be in intensive care for as long as I was, and they saved my life three times.

“You read a lot about things going wrong in hospitals, but they deserve praise for all the things they do right.”

The 43-year-old, from Bearwood, also praised staff for helping his wife Sara, and youngsters Abby, 13, Amy, 12, and Alfie, nine, feel comfortable during his treatment.

Mr Luff was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in February last year, for which he underwent three gruelling sessions of chemotherapy and a received a bone marrow transplant.

Although in remission, Mr Luff’s immune system was so compromised that just after Christmas he caught pneumonia, and was in a medically-induced coma for three weeks, waking up paralysed.

But after eight months in intensive care he was discharged on Tuesday and is now on the mend, gradually regaining the use of his lungs, hands and legs.

Mr Luff has had prior experience of problems at hospitals after an error at Southampton General Hospital in 2000 left his newborn son Harry dead of a morphine overdose, although an inquest found that the baby would not have survived anyway.

Last year, shortly before his diagnosis with leukaemia, the family discovered that baby Harry’s brain had been kept at the hospital without their permission.