sunfoundation: datanouveau: Katie McCurdy has...

sunfoundation:

datanouveau:

Katie McCurdy has a chronic lifelong illness. As typical with chronic illness, she found it hard to explain her history—one of the few times you have to explain your entire history—to doctors. She turned to visualization for help:

For the past 20 years I have had Myasthenia Gravis, an autoimmune disease that causes weakness. For the past 14 years I have been taking Prednisone, a corticosteriod, to suppress my immune system to help reduce my Myasthenia symptoms. Unfortunately prednisone causes a host of side effects. For the past 5 years I have been experiencing gastrointestinal problems (debilitating at times) and increased weakness. I have been to neurologists, a number of gastroenterologists, acupuncturists, and a few primary care doctors, and NONE of these folks were able to really explain what was happening to me or give me concrete advice for improving my condition.

As I was getting ready to see a new doctor, I realized that the best way to tell my story would be to create a medical “life story” timeline that reflected:

The course of my autoimmune disease

Severity of my gastrointestinal problems

Key moments in time when I started and stopped certain medications or took antibiotics

Any significant dietary changes

I sketched out the two timelines (autoimmune and gastrointestinal) separately, and then created them electronically using Adobe Illustrator. (I’m aninteraction designerby day, so fortunately I had the skills/know-how to create a somewhat legible artifact.) I used a peach color to represent gastrointestinal wellness/symptoms, and a blue color for Myasthenia Gravis.

I currently work in the field of medical quality of life—particularly applied to cancer patients. Hospitals and researchers can easily track this data—we do, for instance—and create plots like these for patients. But not only for research purposes, it would be neat to have researchers return plots like these to patients who participate in studies.

A quick search for Myasthenia Gravis on Scout.