URGENT arrangements have been made to bring a stranded Suffolk clergyman who underwent emergency surgery overseas back to the UK.Canon David Wall, 67, of Corsbie Close, Bury St Edmunds, was on holiday with his wife, Sally, on the island of Menorca when he suffered pain in his shoulder which rapidly worsened making his arms and legs numb.

URGENT arrangements have been made to bring a stranded Suffolk clergyman who underwent emergency surgery overseas back to the UK.

Canon David Wall, 67, of Corsbie Close, Bury St Edmunds, was on holiday with his wife, Sally, on the island of Menorca when he suffered pain in his shoulder which rapidly worsened making his arms and legs numb.

Mr Wall was airlifted to Palma on the neighbouring island of Mallorca where he underwent five hours of surgery for an infectious cyst, which began to impact on his spinal cord on October 21.

The family was originally told Mr Wall could not be brought back home to East Anglia because of a lack of an appropriate bed for him.

Mrs Wall feared her husband awaking unable to move and in a foreign country.

But yesterday, managers at Addenbrooke's Hospital in Cambridge - the nearest medical base with the specialist neurosciences critical care facilities Mr Wall requires - were working to get him back to the region for treatment.

And last night he was on his way back to the UK to a bed set aside for him at the Cambridge-based hospital.

Mrs Wall told how her husband had neither moved nor spoken since the operation, adding: “We are desperate to get him home so that he can begin his recovery.”

While her husband was in Hospital Son Dureta in Palma, Mrs Wall booked herself into a hotel nearby with the couple's second son Nicholas, from Barrow, near Bury St Edmunds.

Their eldest son James, 38, who lives in Denver, said his mother was terrified of Mr Wall awaking and finding himself not only unable to move, because of the operation, but also in a foreign country.

He thanked the EADT for highlighting his father's plight in Spain, adding: This is huge for my dad and for my mum and brother.”

Mr Wall is well known across Suffolk and he helps out at a number of churches including All Saints Church in Barrow.

He served in Northern Ireland as an Army chaplain during the bloodiest parts of “the troubles” in the province during the early 1970s.

He moved to Suffolk in 1973 after leaving the Army where worked as a priest in the east Suffolk parishes of Orford, Sudbourne and Chillesford.

Nick Clarke, communications director for the diocese of St Edmundsbury, said: “We were saddened to hear about Canon Wall's illness. Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family. We hope he will make a full recovery and can come home at the earliest opportunity.”

laurence.cawley@eadt.co.uk