Please Note: This project is a work in progress, and we are currently shooting footage and gathering information for the website and films.  Sick to Death! is funded by the Guggenheim Foundation.  http://sick2death.com

In my experience, thyroid disease, and its accompanying symptoms and related disorders, is a very confusing health challenge. The purpose of this project is not to supply all of the answers, but rather to create a resource for health seekers that can assist in confirming that what they are experiencing may in fact be thyroid related and to pose the question why is it that patient advocates are taking on the roles and responsibilities of the medical community?  With the assistance of this huge community, the Sick to Death! project seeks to improve the medical establishment’s response to thyroid disease. –Maggie Hadleigh-West

In Sick to Death!, a multi-platform project incorporating video, animation, medical research and an interactive website, artist Maggie Hadleigh-West exposes her own disturbing, yet determined thirty-year struggle to regain her spiraling health. After seeing hundreds of doctors who either disregarded her symptoms, misdiagnosed or undertreated her, Maggie discovers that her thyroid problem used to be a fully understood medical issue that has become all but erased, and which today leaves more than 59 million people sick and suffering.

Follow Maggie into her colorful, unconventional, creative life where she tackles existential milestones, and through the assistance of her team of advisers, including a charismatic doctor, takes on the medical establishment. Participate in the unveiling of a huge body of medical information, which became obscured through the lobbying and business practices of a pharmaceutical giant.

At once a deeply intimate portrait and a rousing invitation to seize life and health to the fullest, Sick to Death! invites audiences to turn our diagnoses into a call to arms. The final films will take several forms, including several short films to be distributed online to fans, a 60 minute television film also entitled Sick to Death!, and an interactive website which includes a platform for audiences to connect with one another and to build intentional communities.

The project is intended to serve as both a work of art and a resource for millions of individuals around the world suffering from thyroid disease.