Over the last year, creative play and games like Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) have made a resurgence, helping players escape a real life monster – the COVID-19 pandemic. Dungeon master Jonathan Hill has been using the iconic fantasy role-playing game his entire life as an escape from the mind-numbing challenges of his chronic health condition, severe hemophilia A.
Jonathan is sharing his story through another form of creative expression – a graphic novel – in the hopes of shedding light on the challenges that people living with hemophilia face. Blood of the Paladin details how Jonathan learned to accept and manage his bleeding disorder and hepatitis C diagnosis, and how he survived near death from HIV/AIDS during the 1980s blood contamination crisis. For Jonathan, D&D helped him learn to process life and death – both real and imagined. Through D&D, he found that he could be a hero exploring untold, unimagined worlds, while stuck in his hospital bed or at home.
More about Hemophilia A
Hemophilia A is a genetic bleeding disorder that prohibits blood from clotting normally. People with hemophilia are not only at risk of life-threatening external and internal bleeding following injuries, but have to learn from a young age to give themselves daily or weekly blood infusions.
Learn more about Jonathan here:
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