Living with chronic illness is a full-time job nobody applied for.
So let’s talk about it.
The things you don’t see are kind of the point.
Painfully Invisible is an independent project about what life with chronic illness actually looks like — beyond appointments, diagnoses and the version of ourselves people see from the outside.
The pain. The waiting. The weird conversations with doctors. The cancelled plans. The paperwork. The grief. The dark humour. The people who get it. And the very strange business of building a life around a body that doesn’t always cooperate.
Less interviewing. More honest conversation.
Painfully Invisible brings together people living with chronic illness and the people whose work intersects with it — doctors, psychologists, researchers and others who spend their lives trying to understand what happens when a body changes the rules.
Not just what hurts?
But what happens to work, relationships, identity, sex, independence, mental health, plans for the future — and all the other things that don’t fit neatly into a medical chart.
I’m documenting it while I’m still figuring it out.
This project started with a camera and a question: what happens when illness stops being something happening in the background and starts reorganising your entire life?
So I’m recording it.
The appointments and hospital rooms, yes. But also the sofa days. The good days. The absurd days. The conversations that happen after the appointment. The things I remember to say and the things I wish I had said.
Some of this is becoming a podcast. Some of it is becoming a documentary.
All of it is real life, happening in real time.
Pain can be invisible.
Our stories don’t have to be.
Painfully Invisible is just getting started.
Follow along for the conversations, the documentary, and everything that happens in between.