Liz Jackson

Medical diagnoses are seen as final answers, deduced by all-knowing medical professionals who translate symptoms into objective clinical signs and accredited illnesses. Within this framework there is little room for chronically, invisibly ill patients whose symptoms do not readily translate into those signs. Their desire to be diagnosed is often regarded with suspicion and equated with a desire to be sick. But for many chronically ill people, including Liz, diagnosis means gaining access to the language of their body, learning how to recognize and respond to its needs, and work with it rather than constantly fighting against it. For this reason, Liz wants to compile, analyze and map the nuanced body-languages of chronically ill New Yorkers, and use them to create tools that not only support undiagnosed people to recognize and understand events within their own bodies, but also change the way we think about diagnosis itself.