‘Undiagnosed’, a short comic by Vonne Reeves

Growing up when you don’t know you’re a spoonie
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Three panel from a cartoon (full cartoon description in body)

Vonne created this comic for Spooniehacker about growing up with undiagnosed hypermobility. She also answered a few questions for us about her art.

Q: What inspired this comic?

A: It’s mashed together from the repetitive, mundane questions I got, but couldn’t answer, as I was undiagnosed at the time, from family members, etc. expecting more out of me than I could give as I was growing up

Q: Have you found creating art has helped you deal with your health conditions?

A: Yes, drawing is very meditative and puts you into a state of relaxation and sorting your mind out by just letting the picture happen. It also helps studying anatomy and science, simply as means of improvement.

Q: What’s your background as an artist?

A: I’ve been drawing from since I could pick up a pen. I’ve improved somewhat at college/uni for art, multimedia, etc. but no one in particular taught me how to draw.

Q: What are your goals and inspirations as an artist?

A: I’ve made a lot of plans that have failed or I wasn’t meant for, so now I’m honestly just going wherever the wind blows, it has seemed to work out pretty well so far. I don’t have any particular inspirations, I just get it when I can.

A five-section cartoon. Section 1: an image of someone in bed, you can only see a dark face and a pair of half closed eyes. A voice bubble from someone out of view reads: 'Wake up, lazy'. Panel 2: Person is still in bed, arrows pointing at their head read 'ouch'. Voice off-panel says: 'You still in bed?!'. Panel 3: person sits at desk, seen from the back. The moon is visible through the window. Arrows saying 'ouch' still point at them. Voice out of view says: 'It's a bit late, lazy'. Panel 4: Person back in bed, stars and moon visible out of window. More 'ouch' arrows. Voice off-panel says: 'Are you back in bed?! Lazy.' Panel 5: Close up of person's face on the pillow. They are dribbling from a slit of a mouth and their eyes are hollowed. They are thinking: 'I'm so lazy...'. In brackets in the bottom corner of the panel it reads: '(Undiagnosed)'

[Image: Vonne Reeves]