Hi there... I'm a human EMT with feline girl Shiloh..

Hi there, all.. this is Patti, (owner) with Shiloh, (female shorthair).
We live in Minnesota and she is a rescue cat from Petco from 2003.



My girl cat was diagnosed with diabetes two weeks ago. She's 13 years old, and she's on
her first treatment doses from a 10 ml vial of Lantus Glargine U100 insulin..

1 unit every 12 hours from a .3 ml (Gauge 29 needle) syringe SubQ (under the skin) after meals.

The food she's on starting out is 3/4 of a can of Fancy Feast pate canned wet food, Chicken, Turkey,
or Turkey with liver flavors, BID (twice a day, every 12 hours).

She's already responding to treatment. After four days being on low carb wet food and the insulin, her excessive urination and eating eased off to normal levels.

Today marks the first day her ear pricked blood glucose reading in the normal range.
128 at feeding time. I am using a human glucometer to monitor her, called a
One Touch Ultra Smart with One Touch Blue strips. Their testing code number is 25.

The One Touch reads about 30 increments above what an Alpha Trak Pet glucometer would read.
This graph is just an example of the differences.



Just completed her first glucose curve day yesterday. Got those numbers written below.

Clock times are in military hours.

Dedicated Glucose Curve One (every 3-4 hours for 24 hours on a single day)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Monday May 30th, 2016

Gluc stick is 414 at 0939
Gluc stick is 365 at 1506
Gluc stick is 335 at 1908
Gluc stick is 299 at 2250

Tuesday, May 31st, 2016

Gluc stick is 221 at 0632
Gluc stick is 128 at 1916

Perhaps with these values, she is recovering her pancreatic function a bit. Crossing fingers.
I know it's still early in the game.

I am seeking any site that may generate a graph from values over time of entries plugged in.
Haven't been able to find any page or software yet that can do that.

Hope to meet some of you to learn more on how to care for Shiloh, through the course of her experience.

Cordially, Patti

p.s. Attached is a sweet spot location I've been shown for an ear prick that works really well.

 

Welcome to the message board, the best place you never wanted to be.

There are 4 things you'll need to manage your kitty's diabetes:
- You - without your commitment, the following won't work.
- You're already doing this one - Home blood glucose monitoring with an inexpensive human glucometer such as the WalMart Relion Confirm or Target Up and Up (the pet ones will break your budget!). This saves you the cost of going to the vet for curves and done regularly, removes the need for a fructosamine test. All of our insulin guidelines use human glucometer numbers for reference. Instead of graphing, we use a color-coding grid - instructions are here.
- You've got this, too - Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as many Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info. If already on insulin, you must be home testing before changing the diet. Food changes should be gradual to avoid GI upsets - 20-25% different food each day until switched. There are 2 low carb, dry, over the counter foods in the US - Evo Cat and Kitten dry found at pet specialty stores and Young Again 0 found online.
- This one is done, too - A trifecta! - A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir. No insulin lasts 24 hours in the cat, so giving it every 12 hours is optimal for control.

 

I used Excel for the graph. Google Sheets (free) also can do graphs.

 

Hi Patti and Shiloh

If you see this message tonight, try to get another test in. It looks like Shiloh is clearing a "bounce" (click the link and scroll to the 2nd paragraph) and might go a bit lower.
Don't be surprised if you see a high number again in the morning.

Come on over to the Lantus & Levemir forum since you've got all the basics down already. The peeps there can teach you all the advanced stuff that I'm sure you're itching to know

 

Hello and welcome. If you look up the website for your meter some of them have software and a cable you can buy to upload the data and make charts.

 

So what you're calling "bounce" sounds an awful a lot like the Somogyi effect. http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Somogyi_rebound

And you are right. Shiloh went from a 128 at 7 pm to a 338 at 10 pm, three hours later.




I went to the Lantus and Levemir forum but there's no glossary there for the shorthand abbreviations and lingo being used in all of the subject lines. And I think most of the insulin products used and measurements are not from the U.S. The numerical unit increments mentioned seem unfamiliar to me. All the short hand scripting.... Inside language forum lingo?

I will poke around, and absorb as a lurker for a bit.

Thanks for your assist.

Patti and Shiloh..

 

Not exactly. Somogyi is for long term overdosing; it hasn't really been documented well in cats.
Bouncing happens with 1 or more of the following:
1) a rapid drop
2) a drop to an unfamiliar level - ex down to 200s when previously running in 400s
3) drop to actual hypoglycemic level
The body releases compensatory hormones which may raise the glucose for up to 3 days.

Glossary

 

I've only ever heard the word "bounce" once and only on this website's forum. I assume the term is colloquial. However, trends for my cat concerning BG curves is probably still too early on to even attempt to interpret without further development of consistency since she's such a newly diagnosed diabetic.

These are some curves I've found that show different diabetic reactions to insulin over time.

http://www.voyagerliveaction.com/glucosecurves.jpg

Is this list mostly based in the U.K.? I've read that a lot of members seem to be self treating their cats more independently themselves as owners and mostly away from a vet's direct monitoring.

Patti

 

Patti, @Anotherjaneway
Have you read this yet? http://jfm.sagepub.com/content/17/3/235.full.pdf html
and this is the software for your meter https://www.onetouch.com/software_kit

 

Hi Patti, most people here are in the US.
It is an international forum, but Brits and other 'rest of the World' folks are, statistically, in the minority.

Eliz

 

Patti, the collective experience here is that vets who really understand feline diabetes seem to be in the minority. And some of us have found that our vets don't understand very much about feline diabetes at all; or all too often the information they have is out of date with current research. (Well, they are busy people, with many species and many illnesses to deal with, so they can't be 'experts' in everything...)

But, all we have done here on this forum, for a long time now, is 'feline diabetes'; and people have pooled their experience/knowledge/wisdom along the way so that others could learn from that. 'Tried and tested' methods have evolved here, and very many cats have become well regulated or have gone into remission as a result of that.

Eliz

 

Wow, you're doing great, Patti! I'm attaching an article below that talks about the treatment (and dosing) of cats with Lantus, that you'll probably be interested in. If you haven't had a chance yet, I'd also set up a spreadsheet--this is an amazing tool that helps visualize the data you're getting from your home tests so that you can easily make informed dose adjustments: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/. I would also urge you to check out the stickies in the Lantus Forum--there's a lot of great information there.

Yes, "bounce" is a colloquial term that often is used on FDMB. The actual term for it is "rebound hyperglycemia", but that gets a little exhausting to type out all the time. Another term you might see here a lot is "OTJ" which means "Off The Juice", and it's used to refer to a cat in remission.

As Eliz mentioned, more often than not vets do not get all the points of successful treatment correct. Many people show up here with their cats on the wrong insulins, the wrong diet (often prescription kibble), and with dangerous dosing recommendations from their vets who are advising against or not mentioning home testing. Bandit and I were lucky that when he was diagnosed, his vet at the time got nearly everything right--a good diet (low carb, commercial canned), a good insulin (Lantus), and she strongly recommended home testing. But her dosing recommendations were way off, and had I continued to take her dosing advice instead of learning about the published dosing protocols for cats here on FDMB, it would have seriously impeded the success of his treatment, and possibly endangered his life with dangerous dose increases. Bandit has been diabetic for over 7 years now (on insulin for less than 2 of those years, in total), and it took us having to go to Cornell for a different health issue last year to finally find a vet that got everything right regarding his diabetes treatment.

 

It's been a busy two and a half weeks. Hard to believe it's been three since my girl cat's been diagnosed with diabetes. Thank you for all of your tips and links so far. I've been making good use of them.
I've been working a lot of overtime at work, (23 hours OT over full time) due to emergency shifts needing to be covered in my company. I work as a security officer and EMT-B. Just before it was time to start the second week's glucose curve, the time changed when I could give Shiloh her second insulin dose for the day. I called and asked the vet whether or not I could stretch the one unit every twelve hours to one unit every fifteen hours for a couple of days to handle my job's special hours need this week. She said yes, but it will be harder to get Shiloh at equilibrium between the ranges. Boy, was she right. I came home to Shiloh acting like Superman, buzzing around the house, as if on energy drinks. The litter box didn't look like it had excessive urination visits, but boy was her appetite off the scale. She was practically maiming herself to leap to the desk to try and get the second cat's food after she wolfed her own down in thirty seconds. (3/4 can of Fancy Feast Classic pate Turkey and Liver.)

After such success on the first glucose curve I had last week, it was disappointing to see 499 ( using a human glucometer) on a reading last night. I was tempted to up her insulin dose but resisted, knowing that high numbers were foolies and would not do short term harm. Started the second glucose curve this morning and Shiloh's numbers are still high. I can't wait to see what her numbers do after dose one for the day in the two reading times I have left before work.

I have a quandary where I have the majority of work shift days that fit the 10 am and 10 pm insulin shots to upkeep the dose every 12 hours the vet wants. But on Friday, I have to be at work for twelve hours starting at 7am, after getting off work at 10 pm the night before. This makes the morning's dose at 10 am impossible to deliver. I'm wondering what to do in that case.

I realize that giving insulin too soon after the last dose increases the cumulative effect of Lantus and too late makes it seem like too little. Shiloh seems very sensitive to reacting either way to the insulin.

I had what I thought was a good range the first glucose curve attempt. I spent a few hours this morning learning the spread sheet on Google Drive you guys offered above and threw everything I've been recording since May 20th when Shiloh's diabetes ride began.

Here's the link. I tried to make the data fun by inserting photos and fun stuff. The vet can see my sheet, too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1547wqhglK4wPe1a9m_CdnjPrzTzcytb7d_pKM_7vwrw/edit?usp=sharing
Shiloh's Glucose Curves Spreadsheet File



Shiloh in the garden during flower planting. She's an indoor cat but I thought she'd like to see the chipmunks. We kept the leash
short enough so she could not actually catch them and they could get away. Her job was to keep them from digging in the pots, after
the green bean seeds. LOL.

Patti

 

Add your spreadsheet link to your signature then people can access it quickly. Where did you get that harness and lead? Have you thought about an automatic feeder for her when you are working long hours? http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000GEWHNS/ref=twister_B003A030VS?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1
Your spreadsheet seems to have broken images on it. To put the numbers into the sheet just double click on each box enter number then move to the next one.

 

Google Drive gives the wrong publish link. The broken bits I think you see are images. The link share did not work for you because Google Drive needs a secured sign in and so does this forum. Apparently, once you upload images, you cannot delete them off the spreadsheet afterwards without starting all over. Now I know why I hate spread sheets. Too cumbersome, holy cow.

I've used a shared link and edited it just now. Folks should be able to see the view only original spreadsheet you said you couldn't see, okay. Works for me signed off from Google Drive.

The harness, carrier and jacket came off Ebay.. It's a new company and those were test products I got for cheap. Cannot auto machine feed wet cat food.

Here is a new download link in case folks don't want to use the spreadsheet link I've placed in my signature. I uploaded the file as an Open Office document to my website's server.

http://www.voyagerliveaction.com/shilohandanotherjaneway.xlsx

Patti

 

can you tell me the name of the harness? I would like to buy one

 

It's a prototype. One of a kind. It is not mass produced quite yet. I just did a reverse google image search and found this site.

http://www.capitalbooksandwellness.com/products/kitty-holster-reflective-safety-cat-harness-extra-small-neon-pink

 

Hi Patti and Shiloh, welcome.
LOVEEEEEEE the picture of you together!

 

Love the harness. Yes you can auto feed wet food a couple of ways. The 5 compartment allows you to put cold packs under the trays. You can also put an ice cube in the food which melts and adds a little more fluid for them. You can freeze food patties so when she's ready to eat it's melted. There are 're-useable mini ice cubes that can be used. I have the 2 compartment feeder and use all these methods.

 

hello,
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