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Kylie Knott

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.
He stayed in hospital for the next three weeks, where he was fed through an IV drip and had daily blood tests. He says it was a lonely and isolating experience, which he kept secret from family and friends.
“I didn’t want people to worry,” he says.
“The pain kept me awake and I was unable to sit or lie down in any position, even on the strongest dosage of morphine.”
The combination of sleep deprivation, hunger and morphine dependency triggered bouts of psychosis.
“I was seeing and hearing things that weren’t there,” he says. “Doctors took me for a brain scan and one nurse even suggested I download a digital Bible because maybe I was seeing ghosts.”

His time in hospital – “the worst three weeks of my life” – hit him hard, making him question his mortality.
“The other patients in the ward screamed and cried all night and all day,” he says.
“Occasionally someone died, or I saw relatives say their last goodbyes to family members, and it made me really think to myself, ‘I’m too young to be here, I have so much life left to live. What have I done to myself?’”
Ainsworth arrived in Hong Kong in 2014 and first worked as an architect before pursuing his passion for photography and videography. For him, the health scare – which he shared on Instagram – was a massive wake-up call.
It prompted him to make drastic lifestyle changes. He overhauled his diet, cutting out sugar and fat as much as possible, as well as processed foods, and started preparing his own meals.
“Cheese was the hardest to cut out,” he says. “I made big one-pot batches of vegetable dishes, vegetarian chilli with no meat, vegetable minestrone soup, stir-fried vegetables and rice, and had omelettes for breakfast most days.”
He also started taking supplements such as turmeric, cod liver oil, garlic, vitamin D, vitamin K, vitamin B12 and magnesium to help his stomach absorb more nutrients, something that he struggled with because of the damage caused by the pancreatitis.
He joined a gym and took up running as well as cycling with friends two to three times a month.
He also hit Hong Kong’s hiking trails, an impressive feat considering he had an 18cm (seven-inch) pancreatic pseudocyst: a benign, fluid-filled mass that develops on the outside of the pancreas, usually following pancreatitis.

“My exercise was small regular commitments at first, starting with running three to four times a week minimum, each around 1-2km [0.6-1.2 miles] to begin with,” he says.
“I started hiking around Rooster’s Ridge in Kai Kung Leng, which is close to my home in Kam Tin, with amazing photo opportunities overlooking the Shenzhen skyline, and also Tai Lam Reservoir, a peaceful hike with lots of nice landscape views.”
Adopting a fitness plan slowly was important, he says, as pancreatitis damages the body’s ability to absorb nutrients and create energy.
“I felt really slow and sluggish at the beginning.”
He also focused on training for the Hong Kong Standard Chartered half-marathon (21.1km), an event that he had signed up for before he fell ill.

“I used it as a goal to improve my fitness and lose weight,” says Ainsworth, who has since shed 20kg (44lb), dropping from 98kg to 78kg.
“I then started running 6-8km runs, three to four times a week, and would occasionally do a longer 10-20km run.”
He completed his second half-marathon in February with a time of 2:03:16, beating his 2024 time by 31 minutes.
Ainsworth, whose stunning aerial, urban, landscape and street photography has won him legions of fans in the city, also saw his professional life take an upwards turn.
He scored his first book cover and was commissioned to do a Hong Kong-focused project with National Geographic. He also held an exhibition and hosted his first photography masterclass.

One of his biggest achievements, however, was quitting alcohol. At the time of writing, he was 383 days sober, breaking bad drinking habits that started during his binge-drinking days as a youth in Britain.
“I was a beer drinker, and loved a pint, or eight, and the buzz of being a bit tipsy. I liked the feeling of being slightly ‘out of it’ and I’m not ashamed of that,” he says. “But it crept into everything that I did: work, friendships, family, relationships all suffered when I couldn’t manage my drinking habits.”
Working in events in a big city like Hong Kong also gave him a green light to constantly drink.
“My mum also suffered from alcoholism that directly caused her death when I was 17.”

Because his illness was linked to drinking, Ainsworth also suffered from guilt.
“I felt like a burden on the hospital as my condition was self-inflicted,” he says.
“I spent a lot of time alone, in too much pain to sleep, counting down the hours until I was allowed more painkillers.
“I think the fact I was also a foreigner made me feel quite lonely, and there were some language barriers, and I felt very distant from my family in the UK,” he says.
“I think this experience scared me so much that it really motivated my actions to recover.”
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Derry Ainsworth in hospital in July 2024 after being diagnosed with severe acute pancreatitis. Photo: Derry Ainsworth

One of Ainsworth’s beds, in the ward corridor at Pok Oi Hospital. Photo: Derry Ainsworth

Ainsworth hikes in Kai Kung Leng, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, in September 2024. Photo: Derry Ainsworth

Ainsworth after completing the Standard Chartered Hong Kong half-marathon in 2025. Photo: Instagram/derryainsworth

One of Ainsworth’s photos of Hong Kong. Photo: Instagram/derryainsworth

Ainsworth in May 2025, after being sober for 10 months. Photo: Derry Ainsworth

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Lifestyle

Health & Wellness

Health

After a horrible three weeks in hospital with severe acute pancreatitis, Hong Kong photographer Derry Ainsworth overhauled his lifestyle


After a horrible three weeks in hospital with severe acute pancreatitis, Hong Kong photographer Derry Ainsworth overhauled his lifestyle.


Disease

Medicine

How to Lose Weight

He quit drinking and lost 20kg after alcohol abuse led to terrifying health scare

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After a horrible three weeks in hospital with severe acute pancreatitis, Hong Kong photographer Derry Ainsworth overhauled his lifestyle

After a horrible three weeks in hospital with severe acute pancreatitis, Hong Kong photographer Derry Ainsworth overhauled his lifestyle