Legos are a simple toy that kids around the world have loved to play with for decades. However, for one teenager, Legos have always been more than just a toy.
After being born without an arm, a boy from Andorra looked into getting a prosthetic arm that could help him with daily activities as well as help him appear more normal. But when they saw the price tags, the clever boy used his favorite toy to build his own prosthetic arm. Now, he’s made it his mission to do the same for others…
Poland Syndrome
For a teenager from Andorra, a small principality between Spain and France, his life has always been different. According to David Aguilar, his fate was set before he was born thanks to a rare congenital disease called Poland syndrome, which caused his right arm to be severely underdeveloped.
Targeted By Bullies
As a result of being born without an arm, Aguilar has always stood out from his peers. As a child, Aguilar became self-conscious about his right arm and he struggled to deal with bullies who targeted him and cruelly teased him over his missing arm and hand.
A Difficult Childhood
“As a child, I was very nervous to be in front of other guys, because I was different,” Aguilar told Reuters in an interview about his childhood. While being born without a developed arm made life difficult, the 19-year-old can now see how being different has changed his life for the better.
Shaped By Adversity
While growing up, Anguilar had to learn how to do everything with just one hand. “I was born like this, and my personality developed as a result of this shortcoming,” Anguilar told Adding Stories in an interview. “I’ve always thought that, if I had my other arm, I just wouldn’t be me.”
Fitting In
While he is able to do most everything people with two hands can do, Anguilar explained that he still thought about getting a prosthetic throughout his childhood just so that he could look a little bit more normal and fit in with everyone else.
Looking Into The Options
“I wanted to see myself in the mirror like I see other guys, with two hands,” Anguilar explained. “My parents and I started talking about prosthetics after I said, ‘Hey, those arms are cool because they’re mechanical and make you look like a robot’. I thought it was funny.”
Too Expensive
However, when Anguilar’s parents started looking into getting their son a prosthetic hand, they discovered how expensive even the most basic prosthetic limbs are. Unfortunately, getting a costly prosthetic arm just wasn’t going to be possible for the young boy.
Not Necessary
“But of course they’re extremely expensive, and some of the models made using a 3D printer –which are cheaper– don’t have electrical parts that detect muscle movement and help move the fingers. I convinced myself I didn’t need one,” Anguilar explained.
A Life-Changing Moment
Yet when Anguilar was playing with his Legos when he was just nine years old, he started experimenting with building his own prosthetic arm. He didn’t know it at the time, but his favorite toy was about to change the way he viewed himself as well as change the course of his life.
A Favorite Toy
Up until that point, Aguilar loved playing with Legos and built everything from helicopters, planes, motorcycles, cars, and boats with the small plastic building blocks. “Until one day, while playing with Legos, I took apart a helicopter without thinking specifically about building a prosthesis,” Anguilar said.
The First Prosthetic Arm
“I just wanted to make something; whatever popped into my head at the time: I don’t know. It could have been a building, or a boat,” Anguilar said. “I wanted to create something that could help me and be part of me, and, as I linked the blocks together around my arm, I just started making this appendage from Legos.”
No Plan
“I don’t know what I was thinking at the time, but I ended up creating a shell that kept the cover in place and stopped it from falling,” Anguilar explained about his first prosthetic Lego arm, which he built without even planning to. “It was fun to see how it worked.”
An Accidental Arm
“And, from there, I used pieces with horizontal holes to insert a wire that, when I moved the arm, opened and closed the clamps,” Anguilar said. “And, low and behold, without intending to, I wound up building my first prosthesis. I was 9 years old,” he added.
An Emotional Moment
When Anguilar looked at himself in the mirror for the first time with his Lego prosthetic, he was amazed by what he saw. “Wow! How do I explain it? It was incredibly satisfying to be able to grasp objects with an appendage that wasn’t real. It was fantastic,” he explained.
10 Years Later
However, the arm wasn’t the most sturdy and would often bend and break if he tried to do any heavy lifting with it. So almost ten years later, Anguilar set out to build himself a new prosthetic arm. “One of my dad’s friends gave me a Lego plane as a gift, but all I saw was an arm,” Anguilar said.
The Second Model
“It also had a small motor. So I built it and put it on. And I went up to the mirror, took my shirt off and, just fooling around, started posing like a body-builder, because I was astonished to see that a toy could turn my dream into a reality. And now, since I’ve started going to the gym, I have the feeling that, when I train, I’ve suddenly grown an arm. You can’t imagine how I felt in that moment,” the teenager said.
Always Improving
Since then, Aguilar has built two more models of his Lego arm. Each time, he tweaks and improves each model to be stronger and improved movement capabilities. Now, his prosthetic arm is so strong that he can lift heavy objects and even do push-ups with it.
World News
Since news of his Lego arms has spread around the world, Aguilar has been contacted by people asking him to build them their own Lego appendage. While he wants to help, he has turned them down as he doesn’t have the resources to create a prosthetic for someone based off just photos.
Working Toward A Dream
Yet Aguilar dreams of being able to make affordable robotic prosthetics for people around the world. To help him make that a reality, he is currently studying bioengineering at the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya in Spain. “I would try to give them a prosthetic, even if it’s for free, to make them feel like a normal person, because what is normal, right?”
The Goal
“I want to help people with the same problem, regardless of the part of the body that’s affected. I want to make sure they can use the natural movement of the joint to make an articulated artificial arm work,” Anguilar said. He also wants to show others that a disability doesn’t have to stop you from accomplishing your dreams. “We need to make people understand that those of us with problems like this are actually completely normal: we have trouble leading a normal life, but, if we put our minds to it, we always end up pulling it off.”
