Liv McCaul was 25 when an accident changed everything: her horse kicked her in the mouth and shattered her palate.
To cope with the pain and trauma, this young woman from North Benfleet, Essex, began self-medicating with ketamine. She ended up consuming 15 grams a day. For months, she passed blood clots the size of a finger, suffered recurrent urinary tract infections and incontinence, and eventually weighed just 38 kilos. She was hospitalized twice with sepsis before her parents admitted her to rehab in May 2025.
The damage was already irreversible. Last month, surgeons removed her bladder entirely—which they described as looking as though someone had set fire to it—and constructed a new one using part of her intestine. Liv now empties her bladder by inserting a catheter through a small opening in her belly button called a Mitrofanoff. According to her doctors, it was one of the first surgeries of its kind performed in the United Kingdom.
