Sickboy podcast fights illness and stigma with laughter

When Jeremie Saunders was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, it meant he would have to take nearly 40 pills every day for the rest of his life.

• Sickboy podcast brings Jeremie Saunders's take on deadly disease

"I'm known for my cough," he toldCBC's Our Vancouver host Gloria Macarenko. "I have to clear out the mucus that's blocking up a lot of my airways."

Jeremy spends two hours a day loosening and removing the mucus in his lungs. But he sees humour in his illness,and now he channels the laughter in a podcast with two of his best friends,TaylorMacGillivary andBrianStever.

It's called Sickboy Podcast and it's hosted by the Halifax trio. Episodes featureguests who are battling different physical and mental illnesses, or who experience stigma.

"It's a comedypodcast," he said."The idea is to mine forthe humour within the human experience of being sick."

Co-host Brian Stever says there's nothing funny about illness in and of itself but the experiences that go along with illness can sometimes be laughable.

"The circumstances when you go to these hospital visits and they ask you to get into thesecompromisingpositionsthat youusuallywouldn't talk about that kind of humour is what acts as a catalyst to broach some of those subjects and take away some of theawkwardness," he said.

The team says Sickboy tackles these subjects head on in thehope that people will be more open to talking about illness, rather than tip-toeing around difficult conversations.

"The idea isto make these conversations more approachable to the everyday person, [who] might feellike this is a sticky situation that they want to stay away from," saidTaylorMacGillivary.

"A lot of people associate sadness andgrief with these stories, and we're trying to go in the opposite direction to make them more accessible for everybody."

With files from CBC's Our Vancouver

To watch the full Our Vancouver interview, click here