Mr Broadley, 66, was ready to have the operation to have his bladder removed at Leicester General Hospital. He is now ‘losing hope’. However, the surgery was called off because of the pressure the NHS is under due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The grandad, who is an Oadby and Wigston borough councillor, was devastated by the news and now fears the longer his wait goes on, the greater the chance of his cancer spreading to other organs.
Mr Broadley told LeicestershireLive: “I have aggressive cancer- stage three – and it can be sorted I hope, but if it gets to stage four I need to start thinking about making my bucket list.
“The last time it was checked, the cancer was close to my kidney, but that was some time ago. All we can do is wait as hope.”
Mr Broadley finished a course of chemotherapy in January last year and in May he was told he would get an internal camera check to see if that treatment had been successful.
That check was not completed until August, and then he had to wait until November to be informed the treatments had not worked, and the organ needed to be removed.
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In December, he was told that he would be admitted to Leicester General Hospital to have the operation. On Christmas Eve, he was told the procedure had to be called off.
He said: “It’s a bit like Chinese water torture. You get a date, and you think maybe now, just maybe, and then it is pulled away.
“If I’m honest I am very down about it. It’s not just me it affects- it’s my wife, my children and my grandchildren.
“I totally understand the pressure the NHS is under with Covid, but the government has said cancer procedures should be going ahead.
“I’ve got a suitcase upstairs packed with some things just in case the call comes. But you do start to lose hope.”
Mr Broadley’s wife Linda, who is also a councillor, said: “He puts a on a good front, people always say they are amazed by how well he’s taking it, but they don’t see him all the time.
“We had that euphoria just before Christmas and then it was gone and now we don’t know what will happen.”
Mrs Broadley added: “We will not be the only people in this position. There will be lots of people going through the physical and mental anguish we are.
“We know talking about our situation won’t get things sorted, but it does raise awareness of a problem that many people will be facing.”
LeicestershireLive reported earlier this month that some of the city’s residents were being transferred to other hospitals to ensure they receive timely treatment during the pandemic.
Andrew Furlong, medical director for University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, said: “We do have issues with capacity at the moment, particularly for what we call our p2 patients, so we do a referral for cancer patients to the Midlands cancer hub or for our non-cancer patients to regional networks.
Priority 2 (p2) patients refer to those who need elective surgery or treatment within four weeks to save life or stop progression. They are not all cancer patients.
UHL’s acting chief executive Rebecca Brown said: “After the first wave we ended up with a backlog of cancer cases and we worked tirelessly in our restoration and recovery phase. We were able to get to a better than pre-Covid position, and we want to be doing the same thing here.
“This group of patients and any others where we have to postpone operations, we really do monitor and support.”
Additional reporting by Dan Martin
