Gizmo F's first day on Lantus

Hello,

Its Gizmos first day on Lantus and I am a bit nervous. I read all about bounce so maybe this is normal but I was testing him for a few days before starting to get an idea of his levels and he was in the mid to high 200's.

Today AMPS he was at 307, then at +3 he was 340 now at +6 he is at 376. He's acting perfectly fine, other then being annoyed at me pricking him so much and he ate well this morning but I'm just nervous. His vet had me start him at 1 unit twice a day. I was careful to measure the dose and when I injected him I pulled back a little and there was no air or blood and afterwards while he was eating I gently petted him at the injection site and there was no leaking so I don't think I missed.

His vet said for the first few days she wants me to get a AMPS, +6, PMPS and +6 curve at minimum (I am planning AMPS, +3, +6, +9, PMPS, +3, +6, +9 where I can manage although I can't leave work to test and have no one who can drop in so Mon-Fri I can only get the curves at night) and call it in after a few days to assess his dose. I'm just not sure if this is normal for a first day or if I did something wrong.

For some reason I am having trouble getting Google to play nice with sharing the spreadsheet link on my phone so I will have to add it to my signature when I am back at work tomorrow.

Breakfast this morning was 1/4 can Royal Canin urinary SO pate and 1/4 can BFF canned (transistioning him away from that awful prescription food) and was planning on sticking to his normal food routine of the same at 6:30 (PM shot time) and then another meal before bed but I'm scared of spiking his numbers too much if they are rising like this. When he was diagnosed his BG was 368 so I guess I'm a little freaked out that giving him the Lantus seems to have made it worse but I'm trying to keep bounce in mind. It's scary though.

 

Welcome to Lantus and Levemir land!

Lantus is a depot insulin, which means it takes time for it to build up and work its full magic. Usually after 6 cycles you will be able to see what this dose will be able to accomplish.

Have you read the stickies to see if you will follow TR or SLGS? This will help everyone in giving you dosing advice.

This link talks about the depot needing to build up. http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/lantus-levemir-what-is-the-insulin-depot.150/

This link talks about the dosing method of slgs http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/lantus-levemir-start-low-go-slow-method-slgs.129446/

And this link talks about the dosing method of TR http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/lantus-levemir-tight-regulation-protocol-tr.1581/

There is lots of information to learn, so please just keep asking questions and sharing Gizmo's story here.

 

Welcome to you and Gizmo.

 

Yeah, I did read those stickies, I think the Depot thing confused me a little bit, part of it might just me being a bit overwhelmed at the moment. What I probably need to do is have my boyfriend read them all since he is much more logical and less emotional than me.

I think the SLGS fits our lifestyle better so we were going to try for that, especially as we are transistioning him away from an awful prescription diet, since I myself am working on a transistion for large long term weight loss I am a big proponent 'baby steps'. Unfortunately with work schedule and our lack of other people to help we can only curve on weekends and nights but I think we can make it work.

 

He keeps bugging me and begging for food...I'm hesitant to give him some with the rising numbers, given the Depot, do I just for the most part not worry about the numbers unless its below 68 or above ???? (I use alpha trax)

 

Welcome, Gizmo’s mom (what shall we call you)?

I read your post on feline health, you got some great info over there and it looks like you are making some good choices and I wish you much success with this FD journey. Is it possible you could set up a spreadsheet? It will be so helpful to you and it’s helpful for the rest of us to visualize what is going on with a dose. If you need help with the SS, just say so, we have some people that can give you a hand and it will be up and ready in no time.

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/

Gizmo is a new and unregulated diabetic, he can’t make proper use of his food so his body reacts by being hungry all the time, even though more food won’t fix the problem. Don’t worry though, insulin will and he will stop being hungry all the time after some treatment. As long as it isn’t 2 hours or less before your next shot time, you can feed him more right now, it’s sad to watch them beg for food. It’s best to feed small meals at even intervals, but since you’re just getting started and he’s really hungry, we can address that bit later. Has he lost weight recently?

It is so much information and it’s overwhelming at first, but nobody expects you to figure it all out in 24 hours. Read a lot, ask a ton of questions and as time goes on more and more bits will click. In the meantime, you have this entire community of caring and knowledable people to lean on.

 

Welcome to a new Gizmo!

 

Thanks I do have a spreadsheet started, it's just my phone is having issues with Google getting the sharing link and editing my signature so I'm gonna try it when I have my work computer tomorrow.

His +9 reading was 232 so I am feeling much better now. The way he was Dx was that I took him in for his yearly checkup and the vet was concerned he had lost too much weight. They had wanted him to lose weight but he lost 4lbs in a year which was too drastic so they ran his blood and urine. He had been drinking and peeing a lot but since he was on a prescription diet that caused that the vet had not seen that as a cause for alarm previously. Other than that he had no other symptoms, so we were pretty fortunate.

 

Oh whoops, forgot to add, I'm Gen (short for Genevieve but that's a mouthful)

 

PMPS was 204 and he cleaned his plate I am hoping that I will be able to test every 3 hours tonight and get a full 24 hour curve but I feel bad for his poor ears and also my poor sleep cycle. At the very least I should be able to get a +3 tonight and maybe +6. It's that +9 that I'm not sure if I'm gonna be willing to drag myself out of bed for..