Patient

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THE CRITICALLY ACCLAIMED MEMOIR OF BEN WATT''S BATTLE WITH A RARE ILLNESS

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''Intensely moving'' - Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph

''Quiet elegance and ringing epiphanic lyricism... a nearly flawless telling of his unexpected and drawn-out battle with an extremely rare - and nearly fatal - illness'' - New Yorker

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In 1992, Ben Watt, a member of the band Everything But The Girl, contracted a rare life-threatening illness that baffled doctors and required months of hospital treatment and operations. This is the story of his fight for survival and the effect it had on him and those nearest him.

''In the summer of 1992, on the eve of a trip to America, I was taken to a London hospital with bad chest pain and stomach pains. They kept me in for two and half months. I fell very ill – about as ill it is possible to be without actually dying – confronting a disease hardly anyone, not even some doctors, had heard of. People ask what was it like, and I say yes, of course it was dramatic and graphic and all that stuff, but at times it was just kind of comic and strange. It was, I suppose, my life-changing story.''

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''Ben Watt''s harrowing, candid account of his near death from one of the world''s rarest diseases lives on in the mind - a fine testimonial to his fortitude, his powers as a writer and the NHS.'' - William Boyd, Sunday Times