AN MP says he is on the long road to recovery after he was left seriously ill when he had his gall bladder removed and suffered a series of complications.

James Duddridge, Conservative MP for Rochford and Southend East, looks a shadow of his former self after being rushed to hospital in October last year.

Only now has he recovered sufficiently to be signed off by doctors and is working on being fighting fit to get out on the election campaign trail.

Convalescing at his Thorpe Bay home, the MP revealed he had lost four stone following surgery to remove his gall bladder.

He said: “Last October I was just heading to the Foreign Office and I was feeling a bit queezy. A bacon sandwich and a cup of tea didn’t cure it.

“I was waiting to start a meeting at 8.30am when people in my office had to call an ambulance and paramedic for me.

“They told me it was probably my gall bladder, but they couldn’t operate straight away. They put me on a morphine drip for eight days then took my gall bladder out.”

What should have been a brief spell of recovery, turned into a mammoth fight against a string of complications.

Mr Duddridge said: “I had two weeks rest and then should have been back to work, but I kept getting all the complications there was ‘only a 5 per cent chance of getting’.

“I developed a mass the size of a football near my pancreas which was bashing about on my other internal organs.

“I was in and out of hospital and unable to work or even keep up with my paperwork. Now I’m out of hospital and finally able to work.

“I’m starting to catch up with my case work and I’m building myself up again so I can go doorto- door.”

The MP was taken to St Thomas’s Hospital following his collapse and was later under the care of doctors at Southend Hospital, allowing him first-hand experience of how the NHS is fairing.

He said: “Because my pancreas was in such a state I needed specialist treatment at the Royal London Hospital. The treatment I have had has been superb.

“I spent the least time at Southend, but they were very good at identifying problems and moving me quickly.

“There are quite a lot of junior doctors at the Royal London who do a rotation at Southend so a lot of them had already, or were about to, start work at Southend.

“You gain a better impressions sometimes when you see a service as a consumer rather than in a Parliamentary role.

“I have three children, so it is inevitable we have trips to hospital.

I learn more about hospitals with them in tow, than on official duty.”

With his health problems largely behind him, Mr Duddrige is focusing on the looming general election in May and on getting back in touch with constituents, who, along with his family, including his children aged three, seven and eight, have been hugely supportive.

He said: “I am OK now and back in action. Any constituent who has a problem can still contact me.

“Come the election I will be fighting fit. I need to regain some weight. Some of the weight I lost wasmuscle so I amgoing on a few long walks.

“My wife has been wonderful and people in the community have been great at helping look after the children.

“The children have a vague understanding of what daddy does and they are used to me being away for a few nights, but when I was in London I didn’t see them for the best part of a month, so that was hard.”

Mr Duddridge’s children will get to see more of him than they are used to, at least foramonth or so before he returns to full Parliamentary duties.

He said: “This month I’m concentrating on my constituency rather than the Foreign Office. I’ll be doing paper work, but won’t be going to London.

“Then it will be a few weeks before the general election when I’ll bit fit and well.

“The focus for us, nationally, will be the strong economy and long-term economic plans and the fact we are the only party offering a referendum on Europe.

“Locally, I’ll be trying to get to see as many people as possible to remind them over the past ten years I have been a strong MP and have worked with 20,264 constituents since 2005.

“I ran a successful campaign to keep a cancer centre at Southend Hospital and to bring back a driving test centre here.

“With these big issues you need a decent MP who lives in the patch and who will campaign nationally but also remember the local issues.”