Flushed

Book excerpt: Gary ‘Bendy’ Benzies was in his late forties when everything got on top. 30kg overweight, suffering from the debilitating Crohn’s disease, he spent the vast majority of his time either sat on the toilet or wondering where the next one was. And when he needed one, he needed one urgently. His knees ached, he had intolerable reflux and rattled with medication. He couldn’t travel and became a miserable recluse who could barely keep it together enough to work. Relationships were just about to snap and everything around him was falling down. Told “this was his lot” and to “just take the medication” by the medical fraternity he decided one day that enough was enough. If this was the way his life was going to go it was almost not worth living. There had to be a way back. And one day, thanks to the luminous running shoes he’d bought years earlier, he found an epiphany. This is the story of an everyday senior copper who did what he’d done for thirty years in his day job - started a journey to find the truth. Through massive lifestyle changes and years of research he found himself and healed. It is written in typical policing fashion. Hard hitting, with a dark humour and totally real. It will make you laugh, reminisce and maybe even cry. This is an empowering and enlightening book for anyone suffering from life changing chronic illness who wants to return to the child within. Now in his mid-fifties, symptom and medication free for many years and fitter, healthier and stronger than he was in his thirties, Gary tells where society has gone wrong and let us down and how we can find a way back and how you can have your cake and eat it. For more information follow Gary at paleonutter.com