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When I was 11, I spent eight months in the hospital with rheumatic fever and almost died.

When I was at school studying biology, I wanted to be a medical researcher. I did work experience at St Mary's Hospital in London, and I begged them to let me see the post mortems. So the first time I saw a naked male was at 15, when I saw an 89 year old man who had died of a brain hemorrhage.

As soon as I got the Nobel Prize my back collapsed and I was in hospital.

My uncle died in 1987. I unfortunately - I saw it happen before it happened, which was really, really hard because I was 16 years old and I thought, like, Well, I'm seeing this. I'm supposed to stop this. And I couldn't.

My dad's a doctor, and when I was 8, I went to one of his medical conferences where they were demonstrating laser surgery on a chicken. I was so mad that a chicken had to die, I never ate meat again.

I was paralyzed from the chest down when I was 19, so I kind of put my head together about dying, and I think I've come to terms with it.

In December 1988, my mother died of lung cancer. I died too. I couldn't function.

At the age of 16, my father's father dropped dead of a heart attack. And I think it changed the course of his life, and he became fascinated with death. He then became a medical doctor and obviously fought death tooth and nail for his patients.

My dad died when he was 60. I was only 17 and I think, psychologically, that had a huge impact on me, probably more than I realised.

In 2001, my father finally succumbed to the bone cancer that had tortured him for seven years. His last weeks were a terrible, black icing on the cake, the agony, the slow twisting, thinning and snapping of his skeleton. Everything fell apart.