Helping you track symptoms, spot patterns, and advocate for yourself.
Hi, I’m Katie.
I have a Bachelor of Nursing degree and spent years working as a registered nurse before chronic illness eventually made nursing no longer possible for me.
Then I became the patient.
Becoming the patient made me see healthcare in a very different light. Having the medical knowledge to understand what should be happening while experiencing what it actually feels like to navigate the system gave me a perspective I never could have had from the other side of the chart.
It also taught me that being chronically ill comes with a truly unreasonable amount of paperwork.
Symptoms. Medications. Appointments. Test results. Referrals. Questions you absolutely knew you were going to remember until the doctor walked into the room.
So I started making the tools I wished I had.
Chronically Colourful Life creates practical digital resources for people living with chronic illness, including symptom trackers, medical organization tools, appointment prep resources, planners, and other tools designed to make the chaos a little easier to manage.
I bring both sides of the healthcare experience to what I make: the nursing knowledge I gained through my education and years of practice, and the lived experience of being the patient who actually has to navigate the system.
Because documenting your symptoms sounds simple until you're exhausted, in pain, dealing with brain fog, and running on approximately 12% battery.
These resources aren't going to magically cure chronic illness.
I wish Etsy allowed that product category.
They're here to help you organize information, recognize patterns, prepare for appointments, communicate more clearly with your healthcare team, and advocate for yourself when you don't have the energy to explain everything from scratch.
And because I refuse to believe everything made for sick people needs to be beige, clinical, or covered in inspirational quotes, I also make colourful artwork and chronic illness-inspired products.
Sometimes you need a symptom tracker.
Sometimes you need a sticker that says exactly how you feel.
Sometimes you need both.
Thanks for supporting a small business built from lived experience, nursing knowledge, humour, and the occasional questionable decision to turn a bad day into a new product idea.
Made by a sick person, for sick people.
