Mission Invincible: The Backstory

If you are wondering WHO? or WHY?, you've reached the right post! Read on for a glimpse of who we are and why this blog was started. 

So who are we? Well quite simply, two young women faced with unique challenges of living with medical conditions. We are Canadian medical students and aspiring physicians who have been through the storm ourselves. That's right, we wake up and overcome the heavy winds of our diagnoses everyday. Our aim is to be a channel for voices of the people who with great resiliency face their battles in silence.

Starting our medical journey, we realized that the diagnosis we live with looked very different from the other side of the clinic room. The medical side provides context of the disease but skims the illness experience of the potentially mortified patient. Above all the pure disease approach lacks the depth to understand the changes and uncertainty that faces the person as a consequence of the medical diagnosis. 

During clinical experiences, we found ourselves underestimating a patient's pain. For example if a patient rated their pain as  9/10, we would underestimated it to 4/10 since the patient "appears well and not distressed". Being on the receiving side was a wake up call and reminder that  9/10 equals 9/10, and 9/10 also equals moments of helplessness and fear, moments of guilt, times of uncertainty and denial. Overcoming the initial shell shock, we realized that it is not truly surprising that we underestimate lived experiences. If we have never walked a mile in the shoes of the person across us how can we comprehend what they are experiencing. 

We believe that amplifying the voices of the people with medical conditions can reduce the ostracizing emotions of receiving and living with a medical illness and can be a resource of strength and inspiration for those that continue to fight. Importantly, it can help ignite empathy through sharing lived experiences. 

Invincible We Are is a platform where we wish to weave together our love for writing, our medical knowledge, and the lived experiences to put forth a person-centered-approach to medical conditions. This is a place where stories of resilience with medical diagnoses will be shared in a safe and positive manner. We want this page to be for you, for us, for everyone; to deepen our understanding that we all are courageous. By understanding differences in human experience we can undoubtedly increase our empathy and acceptance of those around us. 

We hope you look forward to each new post, each new story, and each new perspective. Each post will be full of new learning from an educational standpoint and descriptive views into the experiences of those living with medical diagnoses. 

Please utilize the following link if you would like to share your story. The story will be posted anonymously. 

https://forms.gle/MfzE3jjqFRyKM6Pv7

                                                We look forward to creating a positive sharing space for all of us  - D&R.