Cathryn Kemp is an author whose book: Painkiller Addict, I began reading recently. A 30-something travel journalist, used to visiting such exotic locations as Burma, Laos and Peru, Cathryn finds herself diagnosed with pancreatitis (the most painful condition in existence, according to her medic) and in a UK hospital drugged up on morphine.
One afternoon she's tucked up in her bed when a pressing thought enters her mind: "I suddenly realise I need a shit". Getting no response from pressing her buzzer, Cathryn decides to launch a solo expedition to the lavatory.
With her head spinning
—as the room moves in and out of focus
—she manages to eventually stand up; and aided by her supermarket-trolley-wheel drip pole, proceeds to the loo -- while simultaneously carrying her catheter bag and trying to keep her gown's "back material flaps together with one hand while the other grasps the drip".
Reaching the first cubicle, what awaits her is "a toilet seat covered in diarrhea" with a stench to match. Finished retching, she makes her way past an elderly gentleman busy hands washing at the sink, to the next cubicle. Whilst also checking her slippers to make sure she hasn't inadvertently stepped in any "mess".
After doing her business, and taking a further five minutes to one-handedly get her knickers up, she arrives at the sink, only to find the old guy still washing his hands. "He looks confused and his gown is wide open at the back, revealing his arse". But I did wonder whether her eyes might have stayed down there a bit too long, because she added that it was "curiously pale and crinkled, like a delicate pink prune".
But just when Cathryn figures hospital life can't get any better, the real fun starts. "As he moves off in front of me, back to our mixed ward, faeces are dripping down his legs and on to the floor ... he is leaving a trail of diarrhea down the length of the ward."
Finally she's back in bed and a nurse arrives in response to her flashing buzzer. Overcome with emotion, for some reason Cathryn has trouble stringing sentences together: "I'm so angry. So angry I can hardly spit my words out. I tell her about the man, his rivers of shit, the dirty toilets and the sheer misery of being forced to be here in this dirty, shameful ward. She doesn't care and this makes me madder. She walks off."
Cathryn has trouble sleeping that night, instead spending the hours till dawn crying.
And this is just from reading the first two chapters of
Painkiller Addict: From Wreckage To Redemption -- My True Story.
Cathryn's nightmarish ordeal spanned four years of "painful operations and misdiagnoses", and upon discharge from hospital she ended up on repeat prescriptions for the painkiller Fentanyl (one hundred times stronger than Heroin) which at one point she was taking at ten times the maximum permitted dosage.
Image Credit: Microsoft
