911

Two days in a row we have had a serious drop in BG. Just took it and it is 35 on alphatrak2 meter. Giving sugar now. Started thread yesterday in new to forum will copy here...suggestions?
from previous post on yesterday's events
We were diagnosed in March with diabetes. Oreo, my sweet old man was 13 on January 26th. He is also FIV positive which we have known for about 6 years. I have looked over your forum since march and lived on Cat info's website but just joined today. Oreo had a bad day and I my proactive nature is in full force. I simply have not been doing enough to help him. Today is a new day! We had been on vacation and boarded him with our vet-he was on Royal Canin dry food while we were gone because I didn't order enough. I do not like for him to be on dry at all but our vet insists it's ok. I just ignore him but then we go on vacation and that is hard to do. He comes home and I just take him back to his old diet. He has been acting more himself each day. Today is his 4th day home and I found him listless in a puddle of urine in the garage- THANK GOD! I have not been terribly successful at testing his sugar at home. He has opinions about these things and I have not pushed it. After today, we will monitor regularly! His BG was 40 and after 1 hour and 1 tsp of kayro it was up to 103. He was almost immediately back to his old feisty self. I tested him again a bit ago and his BG was 163 and he was demanding food-typical behavior for him. Our vet said if he was acting normal and BG was ok, he didn't need to see him. I am not going to give him his insulin (prozinc) tonight because I want to monitor him. Opinions?

 

You re right in not giving insulin tonight.
I would likely give 1/4 or o.2 units ProZinc next time. 0,2 uhits would ne to the 1/2 unit marking on a U100 syringe
Obviously 1 unit is too much. How much to reduce depens upon history, Can you create a spreadsheet using these instructions so we know more about recent BG.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...te-a-ss-and-link-it-in-your-signature.130337/

 

Sorry I confused you. I didn't know how to link a thread. The second paragraph is actually what happened yesterday. We are in the middle of the day two drop now. The last test BG was 35. I am giving sugar...he is gettting pissed about it. He never claws but he put them up a minute ago. I think that is a good thing. Last draw was at 12:11pm.

 

Give him some food. I don't see what diet your cat is eating. Ideally if you have any higher carb canned food, give him a bit of that. If not feed him whatever he will eat. Have you retested since giving him the sugar? How long ago? What was that reading? If not, I'd suggest you retest and see where he is at now?

I'm sure one of the more experienced folks will be along in a few minutes to help you out more but I'll stay with you for now.

 

Just did another test and he is at 51. Sniffed the food and turned away. I have not given him a full tsp of karo.

 

He is on Luvsome canned diet. We have some dry too, I will try that.

 

Do not go back up to 1U. Even if you see him get back up into the higher numbers, those are likely results from the carbs given and his body's reaction to the low number. 1U is too much. Since it looks like you didn't test after the 0.6U last night, you don't know how that dose worked for him. When you reduce again, get some testing in afterwords so you can see how the reduction is working. I don't use prozinc so I can't say what that dose reduction might need to be, Larry's suggestion of 1/4 or 0.2U might be a good place to start.

 

Ok at least he is coming up a bit but he is still low. Is there anything he particularly likes to eat even if it's people food? The dry will take longer to bring his level up. Any cat treats or people food he likes to eat? Anything in small amount is fine. We prefer to use food rather than too much Karo. How much Karo did you give so far?

 

No we didn't retest last night because it was late, just preshot this morning. Our vet called back and suggested that as long as today's crisis is over and his numbers keep climbing that we do .5 dose tonight and tomorrow and test to see before do much else.

 

@MrWorfMen's Mom He has had about 3/4 a tsp of karo over about an hour. He isn't real thrilled with it. He doesn't really eat people food. I have already tried chicken breast and he looked at me like how dare you.

 

He is eating wet food now. Sliced Beef feast gravy does the trick. He is always a food snob! Thank you everyone! This is so stressful!!

 

Here is a link to instructions for dealing with a hypo situation for future reference.
http://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/how-to-treat-hypos-they-can-kill-print-this-out.1122/

Ok Whew! Take a deep breathe! You did great! Check his BG again after he finishes feasting! I'll await the results.

 

He has returned to his favorite napping spot and his sugar is 119. He didn't eat a lot but some, he licked a lot of the gravy off and ate just a little.

 

Wonderful!! Crisis averted.

While the Main Forum is good for emergencies like this because it gets the most traffic, there is a specific board for ProZinc users. You will get more experienced eyes on that board from people who can give you opinions/suggestions re: dose. My experience with ProZinc is very very limited so I can't comment on that. I would however suggest that whatever dose you give tonight, that you test at least once or twice after his shot to see where it takes him. That way if he is heading down too quickly, you can steer him back up a bit with food before he goes too low and you can go to bed and not worry about him.

Give yourself a pat on the back! You did great! Give Oreo a chin scratch (or wherever he likes) for me!

 

Thank you @MrWorfMen's Mom That link you gave me above gave an error. Any suggestions? I definitely will relay the condensed version of the story on the prozinc forum. THANKS AGAIN!

 

I remember the first time Rosa went low - I opened a can of gravy food and she turned her nose up at it and wouldn't eat. I was panicking at that point anyway of course! It turned out all she wanted was a different flavor - she'd decided it was a good time to be picky about what she was going to bother eating! Though I would say that some cats get a taste for syrup after a while - Rosa wasn't sure about it to begin with though she would eat it...now if we have pancakes, we have to get rid of the plates immediately or she'll go licking up any leftover syrup she can find!!

Well done on handling the low numbers and getting him back up to a safe level. You and Oreo did great today!!

 

You are so welcome. Anything for a fellow cat Mom and her feisty feline! As the human for a little girl who thinks canned food is waste and tries to bury it, I am sitting here now wondering what I would do if she went that low. With her it's been a 4 + year battle to get her off the kibble so that's about all I could use other than Karo. I only hope I can handle my own crisis if it happens, as well as you handled yours!.

I might have goofed up somehow with that link. I got that off the ProZinc board so who knows. If you go into the Health Links & FAQ's there is a sticky there with all the hypo info. I got into that one without a problem.

Now go do something nice for yourself! Take care.

 

I just tried that link by clicking on it directly in the post on the ProZinc forum and it's broken there too, so nothing you did wrong in copying it.

Try this one instead - I think it should work http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/how-to-treat-hypos-they-can-kill-print-this-out.15887/

 

Thanks!

 

Thanx @manxcat419. Who do we report broken links to?

 

I think it would have to be one of the moderators - @Jill & Alex (GA) @Carl & Polly & Bob (GA) @Robert and Echo is this something one of you can look at please? Sorry if I've missed anyone - working from memory of who I've seen posting as moderators/admin here.

 

I can fix it, but I need to know which forum the broken link came from? The 2nd link, from manxcat419 looks like it works fine.

 

Thanks Carl. It's the first link that was posted - the thread the first link came from is here http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/hypo-links-be-prepared-just-in-case.48385/ in the ProZinc forum.

 

OK, I found it on the PZI forum and fixed it (at least I think I did). Thank you!

 

Looks good to me - thank you! I just clicked on it and it worked fine this time.

 

Thank You! @manxcat419 & @Carl & Polly & Bob (GA)