Tony Pickering

Diabetes: Year One is a collection of graphic poems that make up a graphic memoir – or graphic pathography, that covers my first year (and a bit) after being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, and the experience of becoming a patient, and accepting, resisting and understanding what that means to me. It is unashamedly graphic and poetic. A collection of experiences and events that deal not only with the diagnosis and symptoms of chronic illness, but also with the experience and experiences of living with something that in some way is always there. It’s my experience, and my voice, but I hope it also speaks to others in and out of the same boat.

Outside my comics, these concerns permeate my generation of images in traditional media augmented digitally, to question notions of patient identity and user interaction. With my diagnosis I tumbled into a wonderland - where my certainty is questioned. Slowly who I am changed, the habits and tendencies that define me as an adult - as the person I thought I was, are part of the problem - and the solution. Personality is part of pathology, and perhaps, key to finding the way through.