People experience wake-up calls at various stages in their lives. For Derry Ainsworth, his big one came in 2024 while lying alone in pain in a Hong Kong hospital bed surrounded by the screams of sick and dying patients.
The Hong Kong-based British photographer’s health nightmare started on July 24, 2024, when he woke up with what he thought was a mild hangover. Then severe abdominal pain took over.
He called an ambulance and, in hospital, spent the first few hours crying in pain on a toilet floor until a nurse rushed him for a CAT scan and gave him morphine.
The diagnosis was severe acute pancreatitis (SAP), a serious condition in which the pancreas – a gland behind the stomach that plays a vital role in both digestion and blood sugar regulation – becomes severely inflamed. This can lead to organ failure and even death.
While gallstones and alcohol abuse are common causes of acute pancreatitis, many factors can lead to SAP. Sometimes the cause is unknown.
Ainsworth, who was 34 at the time, was told that the situation would have been much worse if the infection had entered his bloodstream or shut down his surrounding organs.