The numbers you are seeing aren't that bad, all things considered, she's seeing a lot of blues and most of the rest is low yellows. I know you've been giving insulin since November, but you've only really had the reins in your hand since January, because you've been monitoring and following a method since then.
I don't think people understand or appreciate the length of time it can take to achieve regulation. I know I didn't! The vets make it sound like we just give insulin, play around with the dose a bit and a few weeks after diagnosis, voila! And if that doesn't work for your kitty, they must be a hard to manage diabetic and will never be regulated. Neither of those are accurate. It takes some cats longer than others, that's all. Some are more difficult, but I think it's way to soon to make that call for Luci, you are for all intents and purposes less than 2 months in. Look at Asia's SS in the beginning. My vet labeled her a "brittle diabetic", well he wouldn't call her that now!
As far as waffling between doses, you have a few options from what I see, and hopefully the others will weigh in when they see the tags:
- You can increase again, and decrease again if it's earned and keep doing that, it may work out eventually as cats change, it may work out better for Luci if you try to steer with food.
- Another thing I've had success with when this happen to Asia, but this is just my observation and not something written as a rule, is what I call a kick in the pants dose. You know 1.75 is probably too much, and 1.5 doesn't seem to be enough, but you increase to 1.75 and shoot that for a cycle or two to bring the numbers back to some reasonable preshot and then reduce to 1.5 and see if it sticks when it has the momentum of a nice preshot. I think some people call something similar to this "shooting through the bounce", but that's when they don't reduce right away because the preshot number after the reduction is earned is too high, for example your pm 2/21 cycle. You will still likely deal with some lower numbers than you want to see, Luci is bouncy, the more blues and greens she sees, the better she will get used to them and not bounce as much (hopefully). You would have to very closely monitor to try either of these techniques because when a bounce breaks, and it can be somewhat unpredictable, they gain a lot of momentum and you will likely see lime greens if it gets ahead of you.
- Lastly, you could do an in between dose. It's generally not recommended because it just gets tricky and it's harder to know what to increase or decrease the next time, it's somewhat difficult to do consistently without calipers and is just a pain to keep up with. If you use calipers for dosing, it's easier to get more precise measurements. I would recommend you try calipers if you haven't, I found some syringes so wildly different from other in the same lot, I was shooting what I thought was 1.5 units and sometimes it ended up being closer to 2 because of the inconsistently printed lines. That can certainly mess with the numbers you see and add to your frustration. Asia got something looking more like regulation when I switched to using calipers (it's a row marked in her SS in October 2017 if you want to see the before and after).
One more handy bit from the first bullet item, if you know or can learn when Luci's onset is (how long it takes for the insulin to kick in after you give a shot), you might be able to steer with food and get ahead of those lime green drops. Find her onset, you are missing a lot of +1 data and I think onset might be sooner than you think it is, it could even be +.5, you won't know until you figure it out. If it's pretty early in the cycle, you might want to feed higher carbs at your preshot meals and see if that helps any.
On 2/21, I'm curious what the +1 was. Let's pretend it was 100, that's a pretty fast and steep drop, 100 and you know she can keep dropping a bit for those first 3-4 hours. So you see that big drop right away and instead of waiting for the lime green lottery to come at +2, you try to head it off with higher carb food at +1 and slow her down. I know you tried to do it when you saw the 84, but it was too late then, the +1 could have been a game changer. If you can do this successfully, for a time, the 1.75 dose might work out to keep her in greens and blues longer and quell some of the bouncing. Sometimes cats are bent to earn a reduction and there is nothing you can do about it, but you won't know the difference without some more experimenting.
If it were me in your situation, I'd try option one first and experiment steering with food before you try the others. Get some more opinions and see what you think about it all before deciding.
Some cats are just bouncier than others. Roll with it.
I used bounce days to do something for me and ease off on the testing. 