A graphic novel about chronic pain, mental health complications and mixed experiences of the medical profession from a talented comic book artist who turns years of agony and poor medical management into an hilarious and shockingly frank tale.

A story that brings tears to your eyes, in more ways than one. It touches you so much you it makes you want to cross your legs in sympathy - Nev Fountain, writer at Dead Ringers, author of Painkiller

Rob Wells has spent much of his adult life coping with chronic pain of different kinds - an embarrassing bowel problem in his early 20s, recurring testicular pain in his late 20s and 30s, and back problems requiring spinal surgery in his early 40s. Consistent through these experiences has been a feeling of being passed from pillar to post by the medical community, seemingly at a loss to explain the cause of these issues, or to find a lasting solution for them.

This hilarious and brutally frank graphic memoir tells Rob's story, taking us through emergency surgery for a misdiagnosed twisted testicle, the extremes of weight loss and weight gain, the insides of far too many public toilets, and having to resort to walking with a cane. As Rob's back, sack and crack all became causes for concern so too did his brain, as his recurring problems unsurprisingly left him with depression and agoraphobia.

This is the warm and witty story of a man's battle with his own body, and with the medical industry that couldn't quite appreciate the problem. For anyone who has ever felt let down by their doctors, or who has suffered with chronic pain that shows no sign of subsiding, Rob Wells bravely invites you to really get to grips with his balls.

With a crisp, clean cartooning style, a dry wit and a line in merciless self-deprecation, [Wells has] been long overdue his own moment in the spotlight . . . What makes this such a markedly different read in the graphic medicine strand of comics storytelling is Wells's ability to find humour in subject matter that would otherwise seem beyond comedy . . . This is a graphic novel that is uncompromisingly honest and open, and refreshingly so. Robert Wells's debut book puts the 'graphic' in 'graphic medicine' with a bleakly witty flourish. Not so much painfully amusing as excruciatingly, squirmingly and eye-wateringly funny