Patient: The True Story of a Rare Illness - Hardcover

Ben Watt's Patient is not the memoir one might expect from half of the pop duo Everything But The Girl. This is no star diary, no ordinary account of songwriting or performances, but a harrowing tale of Watt's battle with a rare life- threatening disease that ravaged his innards and left him with only three feet of intestine. This brush with death compelled Watt to write--the first thing he's "done apart from making records," and Patientchronicles the months of intense pain and idleness he spent in hospitals. Watt's prose, in a simple lyrical style that recall his songs, pulls the reader to his bedside as he alternates between drug-induced hazes and excruciatingly clear visions of his life. The disorientation and fear grow more palpable as his story unfolds. He likens his first major illness to a trip up a mountain: bearings are lost as vestiges of individuality and pride fall away in the fight for survival. Day and night become indistinguishable, and the line between awareness and unconsciousness blurs. Despite the nightmarish nature of his ordeal, Watt manages tender reflections on his family life and his relationship with fellow bandmember and girlfriend, Tracey Thorn.

In the summer of 1992, on the eve of an American tour, Ben Watt, one half of British pop duo Everything But The Girl, was taken into a London hospital complaining of chest pain. He didn't leave for two and a half months. Still only twenty-nine, Watt had developed a rare life-threatening disease that initially baffled doctors. He needed two months of hospital treatment and four risky operations to remove dead internal tissue before the condition was stabilized. By the time he was allowed home, his ravaged body was forty-six pounds lighter, and he was missing most of his small intestine. But Patient is more than a diary of Watt's hospital days. As he awakens bewildered and disoriented in a hospital bed between bouts of surgery, Watt injects pathos and humor into his medical nightmare, writing about his childhood and reflecting on his family and on his shared life with bandmember and partner Tracey Thorn. The result is a provocative and affecting memoir about life, illness, and survival.