01/01/20 Chanel AMPS 180

Oh, what a nice start for Chanel this morning! I hope you see some green today Laura!

I saw your comment from last night - I'm sorry Chanel favors relaxing more than exercising - some kitties are just that way. Do you have a laser pointer thing? I used to have one - but I don't anymore - some kitties will chase the light around the floor - just a thought.

Many wishes for a good year and a great day for you and Chanel! :)
 
Sue and Luci said:
Oh, what a nice start for Chanel this morning! I hope you see some green today Laura!

I saw your comment from last night - I'm sorry Chanel favors relaxing more than exercising - some kitties are just that way. Do you have a laser pointer thing? I used to have one - but I don't anymore - some kitties will chase the light around the floor - just a thought.

Many wishes for a good year and a great day for you and Chanel! :)
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I have so many toys that you would think I have 10 cats not only one, and yes a laser pointer. My husband told me she did not play with that even as a kitten, but I still bought it. Nope, no reaction.
Thank you so much and same to you and Luci. The day of the CAST AWAY is coming :)
 
That's a nice start today.

Try dragging a long shoe lace or string around from room to room.

Ollie prefers it dangling over her, she doesn't have the stamina to chase. She will pounce twice but thats all she can do. Then it's dangle and she will roll around on her back and batt it. 3 minutes tops and not everyday. We take what we can with an older cardiac kitty.
 
Olive & Paula said:
That's a nice start today.

Try dragging a long shoe lace or string around from room to room.

Ollie prefers it dangling over her, she doesn't have the stamina to chase. She will pounce twice but thats all she can do. Then it's dangle and she will roll around on her back and batt it. 3 minutes tops and not everyday. We take what we can with an older cardiac kitty.
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I tried strings, Da Bird, several other toys, including putting catnip on them. Nothing. If you try dangling it, she gets upset and goes away.
Her entire personality changed after trying to take the dry food from her. She is simply not the same cat that was even after the dental cleaning when she was not able to sleep, still she was playful (chasing the balls or scratching me and then zooming, do not worry, I am not that sensitive to pain).
I am afraid that at this point I will do the most despicable thing people can think of, I put the dry food available for her.
In oncology you learn that you cannot cure the patient in most cases, so there are usually two endpoints most important that are used in clinical trials: overall survival and progression-free survival. Quality of life becomes important because in the end that good day the patient has and you want it more often than the not so good days.
Chanel is diabetic and hopefully on Monday we can do another ultrasound to make sure nothing else is going on and also planning a food test allergy to identify what kind of ingredient she might be allergic to so we can stop Famotidine. If all this upsetting she has is just mental and related to the dry food, I am willing to take a chance and leave it available for her. This way I can avoid her being depressed and getting her again to look forward to her wet food moments with joy like she did before.
After today probably her values will go slightly up, but we will manage with insulin and following SLGS. After some time when she will be sure the dry food is not going to disappear, she will relax and eat less like she did before and make better choices.
I know this message will not be to anyone liking here, but every cat is different and I need to adapt the knowledge to Chanel's situation. Who knows, maybe she can work her way around diabetes and maintain a good health and mood overall. After all, look at other cats with serious health issues still doing well on diabetes.
Oh well, this is it. In the end, Chanel's health is important but as a whole and not only diabetes-related.
 
Happy New Year Laura!
So nice to see those blues for Chanel... let's see some more! Hope the ultrasound and the food allergy tests results bring you helpful info !
 
Ti-Mousse said:
Happy New Year Laura!
So nice to see those blues for Chanel... let's see some more! Hope the ultrasound and the food allergy tests results bring you helpful info !
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Happy New Year Lyane! Hope you and Ti-Mousse had a great end of 2019 and a wonderful start in 2020. Ti-Mousse is working those BLUES and GREENS. I am so so happy for him trying to find the balance while knocking the diabetes down :bighug:. He is doing a wonderful job:kiss: and that proves you are doing everything right for him. So sorry for his poor ear, he definitely had a bad and hard life before meeting you.:cat:
 
What happened to the idea of switching to Levemir? I have heard from several people that personality changed back with an insulin switch. How closely did starting Lantus relate to removing food?
 
Wendy&Neko said:
What happened to the idea of switching to Levemir? I have heard from several people that personality changed back with an insulin switch. How closely did starting Lantus relate to removing food?
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@Wendy&Neko I have a Levemir pen, and planning to start using it but I was still trying to find information on the forum on how to do the switch. Do I need to wait for Lantus 14 cycles to end or I can just start the Levemir at 70% of 1.5U? Is it possible to estimate how long we need to wait to assess the results?
Removing the dry food was and still is the goal, but now after reading the transitioning process from dry food to wet food, I realized that Chanel might be one of those cases where although on wet food, she wants to know her dry food is there and nibble on it from time to time.
Since she has all the muscle twitching, biting at the time of the shot, depression and lethargy, it is quite difficult to assess if the problem is health related or just Chanel being upset with the food.
For me Lantus has some question marks because of its nature and the safety alert released by FDA some time ago. It seems that some can develop some undesired lumps under the skin because of it, hence my choice to try Levemir (although for humans, Levemir has more chances of skin reactions). How soon did you see reactions (positive or negative) when you switched Neko to it?
Monday we hope to have the chance of checking in with the vet for : ultrasound, teeth (she lets me 'brush' her teeth for 5 seconds but that is not enough), ketones, breathing, and hopefully a chest x-ray. I was reading that for acromegaly they can do a serum test, so we can do that too.
Also, we asked them to do a food allergy test as well.
If they do not come through, I will make sure to find another vet, perhaps at Angell Memorial. Or we can try talk to Orla Mahony at Tufts to see if she can recommend a regular vet.
Chanel never had the clinical sings of diabetes meaning she still drinks 80-100 ml water, using the literbox 1-2 times a day and being a picky eater to the point where she refuses to eat if she does not like it (we gave her raw ground chicken and she likes it, but the moment we add the supplements to it she just walks away).
 
You can shoot Lantus one cycle, then Lev the next, at 70% of the Lantus dose. If you still have dry food in the picture, you wait a week and evaluate the dose. As for how long it takes to see results, it does depend on the cat. It can take up to a few months for some cats to learn how to work the new insulin. I liked Lev by the second cycle. Neko never had skin reactions with either insulin

There is no one reliable “food allergy test”. It’s more a trial and error thing.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
You can shoot Lantus one cycle, then Lev the next, at 70% of the Lantus dose. If you still have dry food in the picture, you wait a week and evaluate the dose. As for how long it takes to see results, it does depend on the cat. It can take up to a few months for some cats to learn how to work the new insulin. I liked Lev by the second cycle. Neko never had skin reactions with either insulin

There is no one reliable “food allergy test”. It’s more a trial and error thing.
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@Wendy&Neko sorry for the late response, just got home from running errands. We still have the dry food in the picture, but I think Chanel is getting used slowly to not eat too much during night, which means less dry food. When you say cycle, you mean 12 hours, right? If Neko did not have any reaction with Lantus, what made you change it? Just curious :)
As for the results, I suppose Chanel will let me know :cat: in a catly kind of way :)
 
Yes, the time between shots is a cycle, so two cycles a day a day.

Neko had two conditions that at times caused a need for high doses. Lantus stings more at higher doses. She did occasionally walk away from the larger dose shots. It the main reason I switched because she was so bouncy and I had heard Lev was better duration and seemed to work better for cats with “high dose” conditions. I have that in quotes because for most of the time, Neko was on smaller doses.
 
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