BG level 35 at +4

I've never seen it this low before. She is not showing symptoms of hypo to my knowledge - she is just a little freaked out because I had company over and they just left right before I tested her. My spreadsheet is not up to date yet, I will take care of it later. I'm in a temporary house until I move overseas, so I went looking for something in the pantry that would help bring her levels back up. I couldn't find honey or karo syrup, but I did find mini marshmallows. I tried to give them to her (my sister's cat loves marshmallows), but she wouldn't eat them. I went looking again in the pantry and found the karo syrup, but didn't realize it had vanilla in it until after I put a big dollop on my finger and rubbed it into her teeth/gums. Googled to see if vanilla was safe for cats. Looks like some say yes, some say no, called vet to verify. They said it should be fine. I'm going to BG test her again soon to make sure her levels come back up. Any other tips? I was supposed to leave the house 15 minutes ago for a party, and was still going to leave once her sugars came back up, but do I need to stay with her the rest of the day even after they come back up?

 

Test every 20 minutes, and keep posting. She needs you there right now to keep her safe. Do you have any high carb food, with gravy in it. Scrape off the gravy and give her a tsp..not too much, to help raise BG. Or a tsp of high carb pate.

 

Jenna, how is she doing?

 

Tested again 30 minutes after the 35 BG result (about 10-12 minutes after the syrup) and she was 65. Will test again soon and post.

 

Ok, good, it's coming up, but the syrup doesn't last long, it's very temporary, try some food, even some lunchmeat or something if you don't have wet food. Do you have a hypo kit made up? the food carbs will last longer and get that BG up to a more comfortable level.

 

She is eating some of the food I left out for her this morning right now. It's a Fancy Feast Fish & Shrimp Flaked food. I do have a high carb food pate for her, should I use it now even though her levels are coming back up? It's Hills A/D wet food. I do have some of her old dry food that was higher carb, first ingredient is green peas.

 

Looks like we posted at the same time. I will get her some of her dry high carb food, she will likely eat it, unlike the wet food which will go to waste. I'm saving the high carb wet food in case she ever loses consciousness and I have to rub it into her gums.

 

Wet food is best, dry food takes longer to clear the system after the crisis.

 

Only problem is she doesn't eat wet food usually. Do I need to force feed it to her?

 

I would wait until your next check (30 min after the last one) to see if you need to give her HC dry food. If she is eating after the karo syrup, she may be able to maintain on her own. As long as she doesn't start dropping again, try to keep HC food to a minimum to avoid her going through the roof. The idea is to gently steer. 65 is a good number, and you don't want to send her to the moon!

 

You don't want to fill her up, just little bits at a time, and keeps testing to make sure she doesn't drop again.

 

Thanks for chiming in, it's always good to have help

 

Oops. I already gave her the high carb dry food. She ate about 15 pieces of it before I took it away. I'm sure she will skyrocket now, this stuff is potent with carbs.

 

That's ok! Better too high that too low. You'll be able to see how she does with it and know if it worked, or if you need to do things differently next time

 

You are doing your best, and it's scary. You found the syrup, used it and posted. You are a great momma bean!!!!
If you have not done before, print out the hypo instructions and be sure your kit is in order. I would rather you waste a can of wet food than have Kitsu skyrocketing off high carb dry food, it doesn't have to be expensive stuff. It's a just in case.

 

Yeah, I just hesitated to use the wet food since I only have 1 can of it. This is my first hypo episode, and being that I'm not in my own house/environment anymore, I definitely wasn't as prepared for it as I had hoped to be. I just focused on force-feeding her that syrup as quickly as I could. Going to do another test soon, will post the result. Thanks so much for your help, Lou and Spot's Mom

 

Delaying her test a bit, she is hiding in a place where I cannot reach her without severely stressing her out. Trying to lure her out with a toy/treats so I can get a blood test.

 

After a +6 the insulin should start going down. Until then you might keep checking. Great job btw.! I’d say a reduction is in order! 65 is a safe number & unless she dives again the high carb isn’t needed. I think Lou covered all that. Sorry I chimed in late but you are in excellent hands! You did fantastic for the first time. Glad she’s ok!

 

First and hopefully the last! We only had one and although the BG was not terribly low, I was very worried. One note though, you would rub the Karo syrup on the gums for fast absorption, but I don't believe the wet food would act the same way. It works by ingestion. I was giving Idjit way too much h/c wet food then trying to get BG up, I was told to slow down, breathe and give a tsp at a time. I tell you, after that event I got my stuff together and made my hypo tool kit. Still have it even tho my "tiny boy" is in remission now.

 

Thanks Becky, I appreciate it! Unfortunately, I already gave her the high carb dry after the 65 reading, so I'm sure she's slowly skyrocketing right now. I still haven't had luck with luring her out, so I'll probably have to scare her out with the vacuum cleaner in a minute.

Lou, my old vet told me the wet food she gave me works through the gums as well, but she also gave me a slew of bad information about home testing and diet, so who knows at this point, haha. That's why I had to switch vets, actually.

 

Jenna, would you remove the 911 from your thread title now?

 

Karo is probably best for true hypo emergencies as is much more concentrated than the food could be. Find her favorite wet gravy food to use in these situations in the future. Less carbs than the dry and usually even a stubborn eater will be tempted to eat a food they love!

 

Good job testing and keeping him safe

 

She is currently at 76 now, at +5.5.

Edit: Removed the 911 prefix, sorry about that!

 

So glad, thanks for letting us know. You can exhale and rest a moment! No prob re: the 911. You did well Jenna and handled the event.

 

You can also use pure maple syrup. Tube of cake frosting is handy to keep in cabinet. It's great if you have to travel with kitty as it doesn't need refrigeration.

 

Thanks for the tips, Paula! Will keep it in mind

Thanks, Lou! I actually just had to wrap her up in a blanket and cut the marshmallows out of her back leg fur. She sat on them earlier when I was trying to get a blood test after the karo syrup. She is not a happy camper. Poor baby. I'm going to go get ready for the party now and test her once more at +6 to see how she's doing, then I'll probably leave if she's higher than 76. I won't be back until closer to PMPS. Should I be concerned about her in the meantime? I would stick with her, but this might be the last chance I get to see my friends before I move overseas, so I really want to see them as long as Kitsu will be alright. If not, I can stick with her for the rest of the day instead.

 

I can't say if you need to stay or not. Let's get some other input ok? @JanetNJ @FurBabiesMama @Olive & Paula

 

I think it sounds like a plan. Just leave our a little regular food.

 

I agree with Janet. Go to your party and just leave out some food for her. Have fun!

 

Thanks so much everyone, I really appreciate it. She is 98 now at +6, so I feel like everything should be okay. I'll update this thread again later at PMPS.

 

She should bee fine. Just leave some regular food out.

 

The point of the Karo/honey/syrup is to raise the BG quickly; and while it is quick-acting, it is also short-lived. The canned/wet HC food takes a little longer to work, but will also last longer. The dry food takes longest to work, may raise BG higher than you'd like, and will take the longest to wear off and leave the system. When BG drops low enough to be potentially dangerous, it's best to give a bit of Karo, followed up with some gravy squeezed from a gravy-style food. If no gravy is available, then use a mid- to high-carb food, depending on how low the BG is.

 

I agree with all of this! I have never heard of rubbing wet food on a cats gums when they are unconscious... that does not seem like it would do any good at all!

 

No, I don't think enough would be absorbed to be of much benefit.

 

Yeah, I didn't really know how accurate it was, since my old vet told me about rubbing the wet food into the cat's gums when unconscious to help bring BG levels up. She was also against home testing and believed that remission was bad because, "it means the cat goes into hypo first". There were a lot of other things she said that I didn't agree with. Thankfully I don't see that vet anymore. I just got back from the party, Kitsu seems to be alert and well. She ate a bit of her low carb dry food (YAZ Mature) while I was gone, and a little bit of the Fancy Feast Fish and Shrimp Flaked. Her PMPS is in 15 minutes. She was 173 this morning, and I shot 1.25 unit at that point, and she didn't really eat much food all morning, so that must have caused the hypo. I'll be giving her 1 unit tonight instead of 1.25 unit, as long as she is 200 or over at PMPS. Under 200 and I'll stall for 30 minutes, but will skip if I have to stall longer than that.

 

So she was 259 at PMPS, which is pretty normal for her. Gave 1 unit of insulin. Will test again at +5 or so, will need to set an alarm to wake me up for it. I probably won't be posting on this thread again, so thank you to all who helped, I really appreciate it and will keep all the advice in mind in case this happens again.

Edit: I will also mention that this is probably a rare case. She has been really stressed out lately with all the moving and hasn't been eating as much as she should (but still eating enough). Once she gets back into a routine in her new environment, she will eat more. Usually takes her 4-6 days to warm up to a new house, and this is only day 3, so she should be coming around soon to eating normal amounts again. I think 173 was probably safe to shoot at, but considering that she didn't want to eat, it put her into hypo, sadly.