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WE ASKED A SELECTION OF PEOPLE COMING OUT OF A DIABETIC CLINIC
TO CONTINUE A MADE UP STORY BASING EACH OF THEIR INPUTS
ON THEIR OWN EXPERIENCES WITH DIABETES.
I remember there was this kid called Jake
and he started losing loads of weight.
He completely lost his appetite.
He was always thirsty. Always drinking water.
And his mum finally convinced him to go to the doctors and get a blood test
and it turned out he was Type 1 diabetic.
Jake has to learn to inject himself with insulin before meals,
count his carbs and all that.
He learns to do it and everything
but for some reason develops a fear of injecting front of people in public.
Now that he's been diagnosed with diabetes,
he's associated it with kind of like a disability.
And so he doesn't want to shoot up in public,
or in front of his friends as well as strangers,
because they're going to label him as disabled.
He went to work in Hong Kong as a photographer
and when he got there he realised that in public there were no restrooms.
In a lot of the restaurants that he went to,
he found it difficult to inject because there were no restrooms.
He didn't want anybody to know. It was his dark secret.
It was as if he was ashamed of it.
He had to hide but there was nowhere to hide.
But did find somewhere eventually.
He took the insulin, he was about inject himself and then all of a sudden, flash!
And the last thing that he saw was the outline of a woman.
The woman that took the picture, she happened to a diabetic herself
and she was going around all the world getting a portfolio together
of pictures of diabetics taking insulin themselves
in just a random natural situation.
She explained it all to him. He was a bit, you know, at first,
but he understood everything and they were really good friends after.
So we decided to go into a cafe and grab a coffee.
Because I have sugar in my coffee, I had to inject my insulin.
So she injected with me in the public place in the cafe
so everyone was watching both of us, not just me.
It did make me feel a lot more comfortable
about injecting in front people and in public places.
And knowing that there's people out there
that are not scared of injecting in public places.
I WAS DIAGNOSED, BUT... A SHORT FILM BY