We all tend to take good health for granted, yet we’re all just a heartbeat away from ending up in the emergency room, if truth be told. And it’s only when nature pulls the rug from under our feet, that we tend to remember this sobering thought. In July 2010, Steve Rudd, middle-aged, nondescript, writer, publisher and digital print specialist, fell seriously, suddenly ill, and was admitted to his local hospital for surgery to correct a perforated bowel. Despite nearly dying, he recovered, to spend the next six months in hospital, struggling to regain the ability to walk, and ending up by finding out something nasty about his genetic makeup that he would probably rather not have known. In that time, he also faced a different struggle, to continue to try and make ends meet from his hospital bed, stop his own business disintegrating around his ears, and fulfill the commercial promises and obligations he’d made to various people before he keeled over. This book chronicles that struggle, in all its undignified, minute, day-by day detail; the bowels are probably one of the most unromantic and seldom-acknowledged areas of the human body, yet they are as vital to your continued well-being as your heart, your lungs, your brain or your liver.