Chronic illness is a life-changing experience, and very often, it is a daily fight to survive and to thrive. In the upcoming CBC Docs film, The Sickling, Toronto filmmaker Gabriel Badejo chronicles his personal and emotional journey with sickle cell disease–one of the world’s most misunderstood genetic diseases. As we meet him, hope arrives in the form of a groundbreaking stem cell transplant that offers him something he never thought possible: a cure.

But of course, nothing is ever quite that simple. As Gabriel begins to recover, he confronts the trauma and emotional scars of a lifetime spent bracing for pain and learns what it means to have a new kind of freedom to live out a future he never thought he would have. Through intimate family moments, conversations with medical experts and fellow sickle cell warriors, and raw footage of Gabriel himself, the film reveals the massive invisible weight of chronic illness, the prevalence of systemic medical racism, and the personal cost of survival itself.

The film opens in Toronto on October 3 and in Montreal on October 5, then airs on CBC later that month.

Check out this exclusive look at the first trailer for the film now: