The bestselling author of This Is Going To Hurt reveals some major traumas in his new book.

Adam Kay, who lives in Oxfordshire, is currently on tour with his one-man show This Is Going To Hurt… More and will be at Oxford New Theatre on Friday October 21.

In his latest memoir Undoctored, the former junior doctor-turned-comedian and writer reveals an eating disorder, divorce from his wife (he is gay and now married to TV producer James Farrell), the loss of a child and a traumatic sexual assault.

“I feel extremely scared about this stuff I’m saying being in the public domain,” said Mr Kay, 42, whose bestselling first book, 2017’s This Is Going To Hurt, was turned into a TV series starring Ben Whishaw.

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“But I think if it can make one person decide to get help about something, then it’s worthwhile.”

When he left medicine in 2010, Kay suffered nightmares and PTSD – the catalyst was a caesarean which went horribly wrong, when the baby died and the mother lost 12 litres of blood and ended up having a hysterectomy.

Time has helped, along with counselling, which he now has regularly.

 

The son of a GP, he writes that his parents essentially pushed him into going to medical school. There, he felt like an outsider, battled body image issues and fought loneliness by going against the grain of who he really was in order to fit in.

He came out to his parents when he was at university, only for them to tell him he just hadn’t found the right girl yet. They must have felt vindicated when, some years later, he married ‘H’, as he calls her.

“She knows what’s in the book,” he says today, but is reluctant to elaborate.

He also reveals that they lost a child, which they discovered during an ultrasound scan in the hospital where he worked.

“It was a pregnancy that wasn’t destined to be,” he recalls.

More trauma followed when his medical career was on the wane and he decided to cheat on his wife when the opportunity arose to perform at a medical conference in New Zealand.

After researching gay venues in the city, he ended up in a sauna, where he was raped, Kay writes. He didn’t report the attack to police and certainly didn’t tell his wife when he returned home. 

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“I was very conflicted. I thought, had I led this person on? Was it my fault? Would anyone care and would this blow everything out in the open and my then wife would have found out. It was so complicated – the shame, the stigma.”

Oxford Mail:

Kay confesses he misses being a doctor hugely, and still feels guilty that he left the profession.

“The arts have enormous value and I can raise awareness issues but it’s many steps removed from being on a labour ward and saving a baby’s life," he says.

Undoctored: The Story Of A Medic Who Ran Out Of Patients by Adam Kay is published by Trapeze on September 15, priced £22.

 

 

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