Washington, DC — Today I’ll be speaking at MediaPost’s Diagnosis Digital: Healthcare Marketing In A Multi-Screen Age conference. Our topic is all about understanding “patients” as people who sometimes happen to need healthcare. That got me thinking about stories I’d seen recently that brought real life to the forefront. Real life interrupted by and lived with health challenges. These are three that I couldn’t look away from:
Carly’s Cafe
Carly Fleischmann was diagnosed with severe autism and an oral motor condition that prevented her from speaking when she was two years old. Doctors told her parents that she would never have intellectual abilities beyond those of a small child.
Carly remained largely unreachable to them until she was ten years old when she reached over to her therapists laptop and typed “HELP TEETH HURT.” That moment was the beginning of a break through that led her to share her life – and first-hand experience of autism – with her family, though tens of thousands of social media followers, and ultimately in a book she wrote with her father.
In this video. she gives us the real experience of having autism. Just two minutes lived through her mind.
Angelo Merendino’s Photographs
Five months after Angelo married the love of his life, she was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. They were in for the fight of their lives and believed they would win it.
Angelo decided to photograph the battle to humanize the face of cancer on the face of his wife. And to always remember where they’d been. The photographs will break your heart and take you inside their fight.
More from the collection. Angelo’s entire site and story.
HealthCentral’s Immersive Stories
HealthCentral recently launched a storytelling series called Live Now. Live Bold. It profiles people living with disease and takes you entirely inside their lives – their childhood stories, daily struggles, and hard questions.
Through video, text and photography, each storyteller is able to create an immersive media experience that you can easily lose an hour exploring.
Her Health Central profile. Her take on the project.
Posted by: Leigh Householder
Finds from: Eric Davis and Bruce Rooke
