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I didn’t use to go to the shops and buy cookies and that kind of things
But then I got diabetes and…
I use insulin in the morning, to cover breakfast ,
then at night if I'm too high, and also in the afternoon.
The baby helps to produce insulin for the mother.
While you're pregnant?
Yes, because the baby works for you.
My mother used to say "Poor baby!,… you made her work before she was born!”
Do you want a "Mate"?
emmm...Ok
So you wake up, you measure yourself...and what else?
tell us about what you do... Do you always eat the same for breakfast?
No...sometimes I eat cake, emmm bread...
“Are you here to see the diabetologist?” and I said Yes
-Oh! so young! - people didn't know there were kids about diabetes in kids.
A New insulin device, created by a young Uruguayan woman, was preselected in an international contest.
Luciana Urruty is a a textile designer
and she has been living with diabetes for the last 11 years.
Through her disease, she has met…
Gisele Mosegui - founder of the Uruguayan Diabetes Foundation - Mother of Alejandro
When he began, he had ketoacidosis
Because he had the early symptoms of diabetes for a whole month,
What symptoms were those?
The symptoms were that he was drinking lots of water, five liters a day
He ate a lot, he had lost a lot of weigh, and he was always tired.
But as it happened in the summer while we were on holiday
so everything seemed to be normal.
He drank lots of water because it was summer,
He was tired because we were at the beach all day
He was going a lot to the bathroom because he drank lots of water.
But he was actually at the initial stages of diabetes
He had a lesion on his leg that wasn't healing, and the doctor had the discharge analyzed
And it was in the emergency room, when I described all those special symptoms
that they had his blood sugar tested, and he was really high.
And so, as his system was out of balance
because he had had diabetes for a whole month with diabetes, and he hadn't been medicated
Obviously he was kept in the hospital and taken to ICU.
He needed to be stabilized, and we all needed to learn what diabetes was.
It was something new for us, and we had no idea what it was about,
how it was treated, and how to manage it.
Luciana Urruty designer - diabetic
One of the paths I have been working on,
Is this aspect that I found really important.
All the different kits we need
The winter kit, the summer kit, and all the things that we need to carry in our bag.
How careful we need to be, to look after the device, and for the device to be safe,
not to break it, not to lose it, keep it away from the heat.
It's a small device, here you can see it in the hand
It's more or less this size
Alejandro Duera 12 years old - diabetic
This is what pricks my finger
These are the strips, that I put here
Here I have... Oh I don't have anything here.
Here I have a cereal bar with sugar, another without sugar.
And these are glucose gels.
A lollipop,
Another cereal bar, chewing gum, pens
Last summer we went camping to "Santa Teresa",
so we kept the insulin in that bag,
because it was very hot and we were in a tent.
To go to school he has a smaller one, that isn't insulated.
But when we go out we take this one that is insulated, That's the difference.
Because otherwise he would have to take his backpack, and also this bag...
So he takes this one to school because he can put it in his backpack.
Can I open the door?
I can leave that one open...
Romina García 17 years old - diabetic
When you go to a party you want to take a small purse,
You can’t take a huge bag to a party! where do you put it?!
Or otherwise, what happens is, you take the bag and all your friends put things in it,
and then you need your things and you can't find anything!
So I definitely can’t use small purses. I always use big ones.
When I'm traveling by bus for example,and I know I’m going to be traveling for a few hours
In those cases I need to take a coolant, to keep the insulin cool, even the one I'm using.
And do you have any coolants? Yes, I have a cooling gel sachet.
Let's see if it went down a bit...
188
So I started analyzing that kind of problem,
Size problems, resistance problems, cooling problems.
And problems carrying the pens: they are as long as a whiteboard marker.
Agustina Núñez 12 years old - diabetic
I was thinking where to take it if you didn't want to take a bag or a purse...
What do you think? Would you like this stuff to be more colorful?
When I made BLOB, one of the aspects I wanted to change
was the look of the pens, because I found them boring
Yes, they’re boring, yeah…
Yes, I think that’s a really good idea.
Because it would more practical, and less noticeable.
The issue with the gestures an injection involves,
As you inject yourself at any moment of your life, at school, at the beach, wherever,
either you go to the bathroom, and in many places you don't find a bathroom.
or you learn to inject yourself anywhere,
and get used to the fact that many people will give you odd looks,
because you are in fact injecting yourself with a noticeable device.
so I wanted to change that and I started testing shapes with plasticine
to generate different gestures with the hand,
and different ways of handling shapes while you inject
trying to minimize that moment.
And when you're at school where do you measure yourself? In class?
Yes, now I do it in class
And you also inject yourself in class?
Yes, also in class or sometimes I go to the bathroom.
At first, when I was in fourth grade,
it happened to me that some classmates used to ask me
"what are you doing?, are you injecting drugs?!"
because some of them didn't know of course.
Yes, the joke about drugs is typical.
Yes, and in the bus also, some people have also asked me the same.
People that don’t know you?
Yes, on the bus, people that don’t know me.
Sometimes I measure myself in the bus and...
I would say, DON’T BE NOSY! It’s none of your business.
Or I inject myself and people look at me; also the conductor sometimes asks me about
Unlike this one, that has an injection gesture like this.
It’s better if you squeeze the area like this, but if you want to inject in the arm
you have to do it holding your arm with a chair or something.
You put the pen like this, or if it's in the belly you put it like this
And whit BLOB the idea was that you hold your hand like this
next to the body and holding the device, which is like a colorful little ball.
It was a struggle to get him to allow himself to be injected
He used to say "I don't want to hurt myself"
when he didn’t want to inject himself.
And of course, he didn't want others to do it either.
But then, he felt the need to learn how to do it,
he realized that if he didn't learn to inject himself
he wouldn't be able to be independent.
If he didn't like the way his friends’ mothers injected him...
I wouldn't be able to be at his friends’ homes with him always.
Another aspect that was important to me,
was to include these devices in the friendly medical object trend
transforming the medical device into an object that goes along with you
without being a burden, to humanize it
ok, I need this object, because I have this illness
but it's not a burden, it's not a serious and frightening medical object.
This is an invention I made in the workshop
with the Lantus pens
It's a transformer,
I can dismantle it, and put it together differently
Yes specially for the youngest kids
When they start very young, having to face these devices
plus they have a needle at the tip! It's a bit...
It's about this character, that has the meter and everything
and he goes through stages in the game.
sometimes he feels ill, and he is for example 230
and he asks you how much insulin he should take
Umm... and does it help you to learn how to treat yourself?
Yes, he tells you that he needs insulin and you help him.
Sometimes joking, just joking because it's a bit rude,
I tell people that I’m injecting drugs
because people ask you so many times that I tell them "oh I'm injecting drugs..."
and they start laughing,
so I tell them that I'm actually diabetic and that I can't eat sugar.
and they ask "oh, and does it hurt?" and I say "no, I'm used to it"
Does your idea go in that direction? I mean for the audience to understand it...
Yes, actually it started mostly thinking about our dependence on diabetes devices.
With the insulin pens and also the meters and other devices.
I tried to work on a device that could give us independence,
so that we didn't have to take care of it
Patricia Pereira Mother of Luis - diabetic
-You actually went through the pregnancy, with diabetes.
I was hospitalized then,
and the next day Luis was born, luckily!
She’s prettier, you should film her...
Luis Cáceres 14 years old - diabetic
In the arms, but mostly in summer, because of the climate
because at 7am when I go to high school
having to take my jacket off to inject my arm…
All these sketches are from the stage when I began studying this particular idea,
defining shapes and analyzing which were the best shapes and ways to contain insulin,
how it would be held,
I did many tests of different shapes with plasticine,
Studying usability and gesture to see which was best…
Miniaturization, at least for me, is really important,
because it means tha…not for diabetes to be less present in our lives,
but for it to be less of a determining factor.
The fact that all the devices you need could be really small,
allows you to be more independent and free.
...This is my 11am insulin alarm.
It teaches you to eat more healthily, definitely.
You leave out the frying...
It wasn't difficult for us to change that, because we used to eat healthily already.
It is essential for us to share what disease is about.
Our main goal is that the diabetes issue should appear in the media
to broadcast information,
and to show that it isn't a taboo, or a limitation
It is a condition, one which doesn’t prevent you from doing anything
as our motto says, "With diabetes you can!".
Alejandro can live his life normally, he is not restricted
he just has to control himself and have an organized life,
but we should all have an organized life.
I always remember something a doctor said to me
once when I was hospitalized because of a drop
He told me "You have to be friends with diabetes,
and try to handle it as a friend,
it is like a friend, you share everything with it,
you carry the devices everywhere..."
trying to do everything without being angry, just sharing, because it's the way it is
I've already said, I'm going to invent some kind of cookies,
Some with a filling, or with cream…
because the ones that we have are so dull!... just a funny shape without much taste!
something like a waffle, or a cream...
I don't know, but I will invent something!
In Uruguay, over 8.2% of the population has diabetes
This is more than 260,000 people
20% of them do not know they have the disease.
BLOB project