THIRTEEN months after first suffering a stroke and then being diagnosed with terminal cancer of the oesophagus, a Redditch county councillor is back in harness and looking forward to serving his community again.
It’s been a long journey back to health for Peter Bridle, the Ukip councillor for Arrow Valley East, and he freely admits: “There were times when I not only thought I was going to die but I was almost looking forward to it.”
He’d been suffering from heartburn, but three days after having an endoscopy to see what the problem was, he felt unwell and was rushed to Worcester Royal.
“The doctor said to me ‘there’s good news and bad news, the good is that you’ve had a stroke but will recover; the bad is that you have cancer of the oesophagus,’” said the 72 year-old.
That was back in November 2015, and he was told he had between one and two years to live.
However, following a clinical review of the initial prognosis, general surgeon Martin Wadley carried out an operation and removed the tumour.
Coun Bridle then came under consultant oncologist Cheng Boon, and post-operation underwent a course of chemotherapy.
Meanwhile efforts were under way to treat his stroke through a variety of techniques.
“The physiotherapists were marvellous! They were so enthusiastic!” said the father of four, with eight grandchildren. “I couldn’t move the thumb in my right hand and they would be cheering at the slightest movement in it, they were so heart warming.
“And Mr Wadley is a genius and so lovely with it, while Mr Boon again is a lovely man. At times I was quite emotional and he was the kind of guy who would reach out and put a hand on my knee and say ‘there there’.”
Coun Bridle is already back at County Hall. He sat on the planning and regularity committee and voted in favour of the new waste materials facility in Redditch at Weights Lane, which will recycle up to 100,000 tonnes of waste each year, despite it being next to where a new housing estate is being built.
“We have to desperately do something with waste and in this case I couldn’t see any other alternative,” said Coun Bridle. “My concern was over the level of monitoring and the volume of traffic going through and the dust and noise.”
The Webheath resident, and his wife Sue, lives where the new 2,800-home development is going to be built.
“They have got to build these houses somewhere, and although I didn’t want them built here I was concerned about Nimbyism (Not in my backyard). If we had stopped them being built they would have been built elsewhere,” he added.
Happy to be alive and reinvigorated by his new lease of life, Coun Bridle says he is looking forward to getting back to helping the people he represents, and says he intends to stand again at the county council election in May.
