Chronic Documentation
Chronic
A Diary of Chronic Illness
Chronic is a living website where in the life of Alexa Wheelan is reluctantly put on display. It works simultaneously as a database and as a diary to articulate the intimate nature of type-one diabetes. The voice of the website and diary is aggressive and sarcastic so that the subject, Alexa Wheelan, can express the frustrations she feels daily due to living in a world unwilling to allow her the same peace availed to her able bodied counterparts.
What is Chronic?
The Project and Its Purpose
Chronic is a project which aims to capture the more personal aspects of having type one diabetes, and to highlight the insensitive way that type-one diabetics are treated by able-bodied people, even if they are well meaning. Visitors of the web diary are given the option to traverse the most intimate details of Alexa Wheelan's life, but to do so they must constantly violate the privacy the is desired by the "Voice" of the website. The sarcastic tone of the website allows Alexa Wheelan to truly express the frustration she experiences when she is asked to share intimate details of her medical status, as many diabetics are, by complete strangers. However, the diary is also humorous enough that users will want to proceed and they are able to view Wheelan's daily blood sugar readings as well as associated diary entries which recount the day through a lens of how diabetes effects her daily life.
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It is important that type-one diabetics are allowed a voice in a culture which caters mainly to able-bodied people, and focuses heavily on type-two diabetes when the condition of diabetes is discussed. This provides the voice of a single diabetic, but this visibility allows for uninformed individuals to learn about the faux pas of interacting with diabetics, as well as the ritualized experience and the practices diabetics must participate in every moment of their lives. Empathy will promote respectful interaction in anyone who takes the time to read the diary.
Visibility and Illness
A Case for the Importance of Chronic
Chronic illnesses are largely what are considered "invisible disabilities". Type one diabetes is a chronic illness which is characterized by a body being unable to produce insulin due to an auto-immune destruction of the body's own pancreas cells, and it is widely confused with type-two diabetes wherein the body can produce insulin, just not enough, or it cannot absorb the insulin well enough.
The fact that type one diabetes is confused with type two is detrimental to type one diabetics. The wide spread narrative of type two diabetes, which largely ignores type one, is the one known by most Americans and makes an already invisible disability, even more elusive. The type-two dominance in media/education ensures that many able-bodied individuals feel sufficiently informed about diabetes enough so that they regularly provide advice to type-one diabetics. Although rooted in good intentions, these pieces of advice are condescending in nature and show a distinct misunderstanding about the differences between the two kinds of diabetes and their respective experiences.
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It is for this reason that I wanted to create a piece of media that could be accessed by many and allow them to survey intimate details of Alexa Wheelan's heath and my experiences as a person with type-one diabetes. It is my hope that this intimacy between Wheelan and the viewer will bring awareness to the unique experience of type one diabetes and to bring visibility to this illness both metaphorically and literally.
As stated previously, empathy will promote respectful interaction in anyone who takes the time to read the diary.
Chronic as a Diabetic Database
Creating Chronic and Why it is Needed
Chronic a collection of experiences which is accessed a number of ways, including diary entries and Instagram posts, as of its current inception.
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The website, Chronic Art functions as a dynamic database which is accessed by the user to explore the life of Alexa Wheelan as it is effected by her illness. Diabetics are typically quite private about their medical status, either out of self-preservation, desire to be treated the same as others, or simply because no one wants to feel different.
Although everyone is entitled to their privacy, and it is all too often violated for type one diabetics, I believe that providing this landscape where in the user can become a voyeur into the life of a body they feel a morbid curiosity, while also being constantly reminded of the privacy they are violating, will help people to understand that their prying and constant questioning is not helpful or respectful. This will allow them not only to come to empathize with the frustrations articulated by the voice of the website, but to ideally internalize why these behaviors are not appreciated, making better allies for all type one diabetics as well as hopefully other chronically ill individuals.
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