Hello to all

I'm very glad to have found FDMB and hope for Riley's sake that I can find the help he needs here. He was diagnosed with diabetes August 2016 and 3 units of Lantus once a day was prescribed by the vet. After about a month I was unable to give him his insulin for a couple of days due to my being in the hospital. When I returned home, Riley was showing signs of high blood sugar (I wasn't checking his glucose at home then) so I took him to the vet who said to leave him for a couple of days to get "stabilized". After that couple of days the vet told me that he was going to euthanize Riley because nothing was working. I raced to the vet's office and brought Riley back home. He was emaciated, dehydrated and could barely stand up on his own. I felt that I'd probably done the wrong thing at that point and was wondering where to take him to end his suffering. But after being back home for 24 hours he seemed to show improvement. I threw out the Lantus and Friskies canned food, and changed his diet to nothing but zero carb food. He learned to like Tiki chicken, salmon, tuna, chicken and salmon, chicken and tuna, chicken and egg. I took Riley for a checkup at another vet in December 2016 and his glucose was near 200 but the vet said it was probably due to being in a vet's office. Otherwise he looked great. His weight was normal, the muscle along his spine had returned, and his coat was thick and shiny. On to April 2017. I went on vacation for a couple of days and left him with someone to monitor his food. Unfortunately Riley got into a bag of dry cat food (the kind based on corn meal) and ate quite a bit of it before anyone knew. When he started to show insatiable thirst and soaked the litter box, I took him back to vet #2 and his glucose was near 400. The vet sold me a bottle of insulin which she said was the type you should dose every 12 hours. I was to dose him 4 units a day, either 2 twice a day (preferred) or 4 once a day. I bought a glucometer in June to monitor his glucose because of the fear of overdosing him. I started a spreadsheet at that time. The vet said Riley had a few bad teeth and that once these were removed he might not need the insulin. The vet removed all of his teeth (I'm not sure why) at the beginning of July and that was the end of any active involvement on the vet's part. I tried to talk the vet into doing a glucose curve, but she said I needed to do that on my own at home after giving Riley 3 units twice a day for a week. I gave him 2 units twice a day because I didn't want to go over 4 total per day. I had not been in the habit of checking the point in time that should have been his nadir, but for some reason I did so midway between injections on the 3rd day and found him at 110. 6 hours later he was at 316, 12 hours after that he was at 416 and leveled off and stayed near 400. I talked to the vet about this and she said that I couldn't do a curve at this point in time because of the spike. I've taken more midway readings since then and have found that this happens quite often. I've taken him off insulin for a day or two, started over at a lower dose and the drop in glucose followed by a sudden increase happens again on the third day. Where do I go from here to get his glucose numbers to stay within a "healthy" range? Thank you for any advice you can offer.

 

Welcome to the best place. We can help. Please come over and post in the Main Health Forum where you will get more eyes on the issues. It is fantastic that you are home testing. It is the only way to keep your cat safe.

This is a good place to start: http://www.felinediabetes.com/fdmb-faq.htm

 

This is the first message board I've ever joined and this is going to be a stupid question, but should I copy and paste all this info into a new thread on the Main Health Forum? Thanks.

 

Glad you dumped that first vet! You can copy and paste also be sure to include what insulin you’re using, what food and which glucometer.

 

If you have a bit of trouble copying and pasting. Start a new thread in the Health Forum with just a few words, then copy and paste. (it's a way of keeping spam down on the forum)