POEM
Self-Defense Lessons
BY LULU RASOR ’23
I am learning to make a weapon of myself. To kick out against the future’s dark possibilities to twist from its terrible tight grasp, to drown it out with the yell I have always been taught to keep inside. No one needs to teach me that if my body is a temple, there are always those change her behavior to adjust what was happening. The companies who produced the pumps began being pressured by users to change things, but that change was slow to come. “All around the world people started hacking diabetes devices to get access to the data,” Krugman says. During that time, she was hired to create the user interface for a nonprofit called Tidepool. The goal was to build an open source platform for diabetes data so that people with different devices could put the data in one place and see it online or on their phones. At the same time, the #WeAreNotWaiting diabetic community collaborated and built a system of algorithms, hardware, and software to automatically adjust insulin based on values from a continuous glucose monitor. The integrated system was called the artificial pancreas but was essentially a smart system for insulin delivery. “This system is connected. My sensor values go to my phone, and
all of my settings are in the app,” Krugman says. “Every five minutes it’s adjusting the amount of insulin to give me.” Once the technology became available on the internet, the FDA started approving systems for the artificial pancreas. Tidepool is finishing the first year of the pilot process of getting FDA-approved as digital health software, which would let it be available on the app store. “The system has changed my life,” Krugman says. “Just waking up with a good blood sugar level every morning makes a huge difference.” Enabling people to build the things that they need continues to drive her. “For myself, I’m trying to tell this story to people who don’t have diabetes,” she says. “It’s about community and self-advocacy and getting people in the same room. And that’s applicable to all kinds of stuff.” For more information, visit healthmadedesign.com.
OBERLIN ALUMNI MAGAZINE 2020 / SPRING/SUMMER
who would raze it. I would rather have the venom now, grow the head of snakes before it’s too late, turn men to stone with a calculated blink before anything goes too far. If monster is the title bestowed on women who temper their rage into a blade to carry alongside mace and car-key claws, I’ll join the party. Medusa is always howling even in death. “Self-Defense Lessons” from An Open Letter to Ophelia, copyright 2019 The Telling Room (www.tellingroom.org). Rasor will enter her sophomore year at Oberlin this fall. This is her first published poetry collection. 15