The lovely Lee Ann Thill inspires us to be creative about diabetes. Below is a beautiful video: Can Art Be Medicine? It made me think.

Oh, you think you’re not creative? Think again!

Everyone is creative in some way. From how you stack a dishwasher, how you hang the washing, how you organise a cupboard, how you doodle on a notepad (check out some Zendoodle pix), how you play music, sew, write anything expressive, sing, dance, cook, put speaking words together… it’s all creative! And it’s all different to the way someone else does the same things.

Sure, there are people who are gifted artists, but that doesn’t mean you’re not creative. Someone watching you ride a bike down the road might think that picture is art in motion. Almost anything you do could be considered an expression of you and therefore art.

From the video: You don’t need to be an artist to do the kind of art we’re talking about for healing. Anybody doing anything that feels good to do that is getting something in you out, I think the beauty here is this is all very accessible to virtually everybody.

I think it’s so much more than just the artwork in the video. It’s all the things and more that I wrote about. It’s about getting what’s inside of you, out. Doesn’t matter how that happens (long as you don’t hurt yourself or anyone else), because the medicine is in the expression.

I spied the Hungarian cake before I ordered the goulash.

Could I do it?

A cake I haven’t had in years, after 3 weeks of doing really low carb (and barely losing an ounce, I might add)… hmmm… it sure looked tempting. I was brought up on Austrian-German-Hungarian cooking, so the taste is like home. This kind of cuisine, and especially the cake, is rare in these parts (unless it’s my kitchen – without the cake or too many carbs though), so being the opportunist that I am, I was considering it.

We were at a multicultural dance event – the first half was about the artists/performers, Flamenco, Middle-Eastern and Gypsy. The second half was about us, the audience, getting up and dancing to the sounds of the Middle-East – belly dancing, Persian dancing and even Kurdish halparke!

Cake and dancing. Kinda goes together, doesn’t it? Ah… what the hey… I ordered it. Carb guestimated both courses, then gave myself half the insulin. Savoured every mouthful of both the goulash and the cake.

I danced to a few songs (kinda Persian style), and it’s now just after midnight and my blood glucose has been sitting around 4.9 mmol/L (88 mg/dl) for the last couple of hours. Nice one!

So, here’s the lesson… if you wanna have cake, you gotta dance!

I’m in Australia and almost every piece of technology I have is Apple-based. I do run Windows via Parallels Desktop for a couple of business applications, but it’s a royal pain for a lot of reasons.

When I first got my Animas 2020 Insulin Pump, I religiously uploaded the data via Parallels Desktop and the Animas program for Windows. Sadly, the Mac version of the upload program that is available in the USA for the Animas Ping isn’t available in Australia for the 2020. No matter, I had a way to upload with Windows.

Eventually it became a chore and I ended up not doing it for the past year or so. I think I did it once in 2011, and no one looked at it anyway.

There’s a website: www.diasend.com, which I heard about ages ago that also takes uploads from my pump, but for some reason I didn’t pursue it. I can’t remember if it wasn’t available back then for Mac or for Australia or for what reason I didn’t do it.

Today I received a letter from AMSL, the Animas people in Australia. The letter said that it was introducing the Diasend website and upload program for Australia and that I could make use of it,  on a PC or Mac. I wondered how easy it would be…

Went to the www.diasend.com website. Registered. The system didn’t however have my blood glucose meter, so I just chose the closest one, and that seemed ok.

I then downloaded and installed the Diasend Uploader App for Mac. That was very easy, and requires a restart.

After installing the app, I grabbed my IR dongle – the one that usually connects my pump to the Windows program to upload the data. I wondered if I would have to go get an extra program for the dongle, which had to be installed on the Windows side. Nope!

Plugged it into the Mac, put my pump on suspend and positioned it over the dongle. Then I clicked ‘Confirm” on the Diasend Uploader App and away it went.

It was THAT easy!

Then I logged into my account at www.diasend.com and saw everything it had uploaded. Amazing! Really good reports, trends and more!

I can download reports in PDF and take them to my Endo, or the clinic can register and can see my data anytime I update it.

The list of compatible devices is here. Currently it includes the Animas 2020, Animas Ping and Omnipod insulin pumps in the clinic uploader and the Animas pumps for the personal uploader.

I’m SERIOUSLY impressed!