17 Nov | Girlie AMPS 158; +11=70; PMPS 103; +3=110

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Girlie's mom

Girlie's mom

Member Since 2017
Condo: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...-691-11-85-shoot-or-wait.186761/#post-2073674

Shot green last PM and monitored her closely all night, testing ca every hour and/or 1/2 hour to try to catch her before she dove. I kept her blue (with one green at +3.5) all night, but had to use between 13% and 16% food to do so.

She was not keen on having a PJ party and wasn't keen on eating, so I had to resort to giving her some Mirtazapine. Since we started Levemir, we've pretty much stopped Mirtz. She was then frantic for food all night from the med, not from low numbers. Not pleasant to see, so I hope we can stay off Mirtazapine in future.

Not sure if I did things right last night, with the carbs, but I am happy that she surfed in blue. We'll see how she goes today. Made my first mistake this AM with food: thought I was giving her 8%, but my befuddled brain gave her 13%. Only 1 tsp, though, so shouldn't be a drama. A little too tired to be coherent today, but can monitor closely.

Hoping for Poo today as day 5 with no poo. Girlie, have a poo or it's another enema for you! Just saying... :eek:
 
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Marje and Gracie said:
You’re welcome and I’m sorry I’ve had to step back and not be able to be here for you and Girlie often enough to really help you. She is definitely a quandary.

What did you decide to do with last night’s shot and what happened? I checked as soon as I got up this morning; I hope everything is ok.

If she were mine, I’d let her settle into Levemir a bit longer but I would start talking to my vet about getting a prescription for Humulin/Novolin R if you need it there. In the US, we don’t need a script for that insulin. I really think that will be our best bet for getting those blacks out of the picture.

Again, remember that we give tiny doses of it at a time that she is going up to halt the rise. We won’t want to give it any time that it looks like she could potentially head down or if she’s been flat black, red, or pink for a while because then she could head down. If we start by giving it as she is going up, we can curb the increase so the Levemir can start from a better place. Over time, the curve comes down some.

An example of what I mean by halting the rise to give a better place for the Lev to start is on 2/23/13 on Gracie’s SS (once you click on that link, select her 2013 Levemir tab, and scroll down to the date). I had only used R a few times at that point. Yes, she went up that night, but not high and she had a great cycle the next day. That’s the beauty of R when used correctly at the right dose. The cycle you use it, the numbers don’t go up as high, the L insulin works a little better, and then the next cycle, you start from a much better place. Although sometimes the numbers don’t budge much with R (ideally you’ll see about a 100 mg/dL drop over four hours), if they don’t go UP, it’s a victory...yes? On Gracie’s SS that I linked, you can see that as I used R, the curve gradually came down into a lot more green and blue and less yellow and pink.
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@Marje and Gracie , I'm so touched by your support and concern - thank you so very much! :bighug:

The vet is extremely reluctant to consider giving me Humulin/Novolin R; they're different about that here in Australia. It was hard work just to get the Levemir, believe it or not. I like the idea of it - especially when she's having a huge bounce and it might not be time for a dose increase, really - but I'm constrained by a) whether I can get it and b) whether I can be there to monitor, as I'd only be able to do so on the weekends. But I'll ask again! :-)

I'm trying to figure out onset on the Levemir, but it's not clear to me: she seems to go back and forth until am +3:30 or +4, but perhaps that's the rest of the PM insulin still petering out? Perhaps, though, it's too early with the Levemir to figure this out as we're still all over the place with numbers, etc. I'm sure these things will reveal themselves with time...

Thank you, again, Marje, so much... :bighug:
 
Beenie said:
Now that's reason to celebrate!!!:joyful:
Glad she went that was getting concerning 5 days:facepalm:
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I had a very serious talk with her and told her that she was going to get another enema if she didn't poo today. Clearly, she took that threat seriously... :-)
 
Wendy&Neko said:
Love the blues. :cool: Almost as good news as the poo.:)
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I can't decide which is better, myself. I'm extremely happy that she's going so steadily on these blues at 8% carb food, especially after having to use 13 - 16% carbs last night to keep her steady. Go blues! Go steady blues! For now, that's amazing for us... :joyful:
 
Yay for poo and all the blue! Glad you're making some headway with the Lev, I'm so hopeful. Sorry about the bump, I just saw the question in the title and didn't see a post about it, but the SS looked like you hadn't dosed yet and were still waiting. I'm hopeless with time conversions :p Glad you got an answer though and she wasn't dramatic about the shooting low thing. :)
 
Girlie's mom said:
Condo: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...-691-11-85-shoot-or-wait.186761/#post-2073674

Shot green last PM and monitored her closely all night, testing ca every hour and/or 1/2 hour to try to catch her before she dove. I kept her blue (with one green at +3.5) all night, but had to use between 13% and 16% food to do so.

She was not keen on having a PJ party and wasn't keen on eating, so I had to resort to giving her some Mirtazapine. Since we started Levemir, we've pretty much stopped Mirtz. She was then frantic for food all night from the med, not from low numbers. Not pleasant to see, so I hope we can stay off Mirtazapine in future.

Not sure if I did things right last night, with the carbs, but I am happy that she surfed in blue. We'll see how she goes today. Made my first mistake this AM with food: thought I was giving her 8%, but my befuddled brain gave her 13%. Only 1 tsp, though, so shouldn't be a drama. A little too tired to be coherent today, but can monitor closely.

Hoping for Poo today as day 5 with no poo. Girlie, have a poo or it's another enema for you! Just saying... :eek:
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I think you did a great job! And look at this cycle today!! Yay for poo, too!

Well, you let me know if you find a way to get your hands on the R. For right now, this dose is looking good and I hope you can hold her at it a bit.

When a cat on Lev gets great duration, it can be a little tough to tell when she onsets. It can also move around and can be affected by food fed. Just keep checking it out and see if you can identify it as she settles in a bit. I’m seeing quite a few of +4 onset cycles.

Hope you got some rest! I also hope she has been eating better today on her own
 
Toebeans said:
Yay for poo and all the blue! Glad you're making some headway with the Lev, I'm so hopeful. Sorry about the bump, I just saw the question in the title and didn't see a post about it, but the SS looked like you hadn't dosed yet and were still waiting. I'm hopeless with time conversions :p Glad you got an answer though and she wasn't dramatic about the shooting low thing. :)
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Oh, please don't apologise about the bump! I loved that you bumped my post up. I was just so caught up in testing and feeding that filling the SS in was in the too hard basket... I felt all warm and fuzzy this morning when I saw that you wanted to make sure that people noticed me. It made my day! :-)
 
Marje and Gracie said:
I think you did a great job! And look at this cycle today!! Yay for poo, too!

Well, you let me know if you find a way to get your hands on the R. For right now, this dose is looking good and I hope you can hold her at it a bit.

When a cat on Lev gets great duration, it can be a little tough to tell when she onsets. It can also move around and can be affected by food fed. Just keep checking it out and see if you can identify it as she settles in a bit. I’m seeing quite a few of +4 onset cycles.

Hope you got some rest! I also hope she has been eating better today on her own
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Last night and today have turned out to be wonderful; the lack of sleep has been so worth it. She's been steady all day on the 8% - no big dives at all, just making her slow way down the ladder into lovely greens now. I feel like crying, I'm so happy to see her have at least one day like this. I feel a bit bad about poking her every hour, but I wanted to catch every nuance of change today and see when/how much she went down and when/how much she rose.

Also, today I let her tell me when she was hungry, rather than the necessary "eat, girlie, eat!" with the help of Mirtazapine last night. When she wanted food, I let her have it. When she didn't, I respected that. And she's doing okay. What I hope to do this weekend - or start to do - is figure out food for her: how much does she have to eat in the AM so that she doesn't dive later in the cycle. She starts looking for food at about AM+3.5, and I see +4 as onset over most days as well. I just want to figure out whether I can give her the majority of her food in the am and then leave to go to work and have her be okay. It will be trial and error, I know. Until my job changes, I'm close enough that I can get home during the day quickly to check her and feed her, which will be good, because food spoils really quickly in Sydney summer heat.

I still haven't gotten any rest, as I had to work today, but that's okay: I'll manage tonight somehow. :-)
 
At +9 she went looking for food, and sure enough, she was down to beautiful green 77. As we still have several hours to go before her pre-shot, I thought I would risk giving her a little 6% food to make sure that she didn't go too low before her PMPS.

This is new to me, so if any Levemir folks have any advice on this, that would be great. I'm okay with shooting green - I just don't want to pull an all-nighter every night, and I have to get some sleep tonight as I only got about an hour last night. It seems like her onset might be the typical Levemir +4.

Historically, though, she's not a big eater at night; what she wants is to eat some food, and then for me to get in bed so we can cuddle and go to sleep.

So how to get food into her at Levemir onset and still get some sleep, I wonder? I've been leaving some food out in case she goes lower or wants to eat during the night and then removing it when I get up to go to the loo or something; usually before 3 am (shot is at 6 am). Most nights she doesn't touch it, though: Once she's asleep, she's not keen on getting up: she stays put even if I get out of bed. We go to sleep and usually wake up in the same position. She's 18 yo and needs her sleep... :) I feel like I'm 80 at this point, and I also need my sleep... :)

My problem is that once I'm up and try to do something like feed or test, then it's really hard to get back to sleep for me. :(

Cuddle pic:
Girlie cuddle cropped.jpg
 
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I feel for you--I've usually just really let go of monkey mind and drifted off, and then the next alarm rings. Hard to pull myself out of sleep, hard to push myself back in. It does help when there are some beautiful numbers to show for it!

You're doing beautifully, Girlie. Don't get carried away, though, all right? Good kitty. :cat:
 
Girlie's mom said:
Last night and today have turned out to be wonderful; the lack of sleep has been so worth it. She's been steady all day on the 8% - no big dives at all, just making her slow way down the ladder into lovely greens now. I feel like crying, I'm so happy to see her have at least one day like this. I feel a bit bad about poking her every hour, but I wanted to catch every nuance of change today and see when/how much she went down and when/how much she rose.

Also, today I let her tell me when she was hungry, rather than the necessary "eat, girlie, eat!" with the help of Mirtazapine last night. When she wanted food, I let her have it. When she didn't, I respected that. And she's doing okay. What I hope to do this weekend - or start to do - is figure out food for her: how much does she have to eat in the AM so that she doesn't dive later in the cycle. She starts looking for food at about AM+3.5, and I see +4 as onset over most days as well. I just want to figure out whether I can give her the majority of her food in the am and then leave to go to work and have her be okay. It will be trial and error, I know. Until my job changes, I'm close enough that I can get home during the day quickly to check her and feed her, which will be good, because food spoils really quickly in Sydney summer heat.

I still haven't gotten any rest, as I had to work today, but that's okay: I'll manage tonight somehow. :)
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You can test her at +10 and if she’s dropping, give her just a small amount of LC so her PMPS is just the same or a bit higher. But stick with LC.

This is the tough part about Lev. Gracie often had me up at night so I kept all her testing stuff on my nightstand and her right next to me. I did the L/L sleep testing but all the stuff and her there, it was fast and I was back to sleep in no time. Of course, if I had to feed her, that was different.

What I would do on nights that I was just exhausted and she was green was to test her right before I went to bed (which was after her onset), fed her a 10% carb food that I knew she would get a bump from, and sleep 2 hours. But I knew her really well.

I love that photo of Girlie. She is gorgeous and she loves her mama! I hope you get some sleep.
 
Marje and Gracie said:
You can test her at +10 and if she’s dropping, give her just a small amount of LC so her PMPS is just the same or a bit higher. But stick with LC.

This is the tough part about Lev. Gracie often had me up at night so I kept all her testing stuff on my nightstand and her right next to me. I did the L/L sleep testing but all the stuff and her there, it was fast and I was back to sleep in no time. Of course, if I had to feed her, that was different.

What I would do on nights that I was just exhausted and she was green was to test her right before I went to bed (which was after her onset), fed her a 10% carb food that I knew she would get a bump from, and sleep 2 hours. But I knew her really well.

I love that photo of Girlie. She is gorgeous and she loves her mama! I hope you get some sleep.
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I see no sleep in my future... LOL! I don't want to ruin her momentum and the good numbers, and I don't want to bounce her back to higher numbers, but I know I can't do what I did last night again.

Last night she was getting 16% food almost all night - from +3 on - but it didn't bump her higher than blue numbers. I'm sure she would have dived if I'd been giving food lower than 16%.

Shoot - don't shoot - shoot and feed high carb food - I can't think straight... :banghead:
 
Tricia Cinco(GA) & Harvey said:
So, did you shoot? On the SS I see a 101 in the cell below the 70. You can actually put it in the same cell - just add it as 101@11.5 (or whenever you got it).


dancing-poop.gif
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Toebeans said:
Did you shoot? :nailbiting: I think I would BCS that dose. I know what you mean about losing the momentum, but we have to sleep sometimes too! :confused:
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I was planning to BCS, but then when I saw she was 101, I felt like I couldn't...sigh...so I shot! We'll see how she goes. We'll see how I go - LOL! I'll try to grab some sleep between tests. +3/+4 seems to be roughly onset, and +7 seems to be when she nadirs. Paws and fingers crossed! :-)
 
Perhaps you'll be so exhausted from last night, you won't have any trouble falling right back to sleep between tests! Behave now, Girlie, easy dose it.
 
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