Hi All, We still have limited data on FA since we only began home monitoring this past week. We will be out of town from early Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon. I will be able to check his AMPS and give him a dose before I leave and probably get a +1 reading. After that, we have our pet sitter coming to check on him Saturday evening and Sunday morning. She has administered insulin before but will not be able to check his BG levels. He will likely be eating more dry food while we are away as our automatic wet food feeder will only be delivered tomorrow and therefore I assume his BG levels will be up. That said, it's only been one day on his latest dose reduction so we're still not sure how he'll react. Do we plan on giving him another reduction just for the three doses between Saturday morning and Sunday morning? Do we plan on skipping doses? Any thoughts/advice is much appreciated! @Wendy&Neko I have been told you may be a good resource on this issue. Thank you!
Wendy has been sick so I will tag a few other experienced members for dosing suggestions. Your question is a little complex because it is obvious FA transition to wet is really making a difference with his insulin needs. Plus I am not sure his Depot is full yet with that PM skip. (For clarity is FA going to be able to have any of his wet food diet while you are gone?) I have seen others recommend a small decrease for their absence. As far as not giving FA any of his insulin shots while absent I personally wouldn't do that but would opt for reducing. @Marje and Gracie @Sienne and Gabby (GA) @Jill & Alex (GA)
@Bear & Lora Yes he'll still get some of his wet food diet while we're gone. I'll give him a can in the morning and will instruct our sitter to give him a can on each of her visits. However he won't get any during the day and will be likely chowing down on dry food. So instead of 3-4 cans tomorrow, he will only get 2. I don't want to give him much more in one sitting because I think he will end up eating the same amount of dry food anyways and his weight is beginning to become an issue again.
When I travelled, I likewise had a petsitter taking care of Gabby and she would likely have had her arm taken off or would have had to play hide and seek if she tried to test Gabby. As a result, I dropped her dose. You can look at her spreadsheet -- the times I was traveling are greyed out. While I suspect 3.0u would be fine, especially if dry food (ugh!) is going to be available, I'd probably encourage you to drop the dose to 2.5u. There are two reasons. First, there's no way to know how well FA will eat while you're gone. Some cats just don't eat or don't eat well because their routine is disturbed. Second, a 2.5u dose is on a line on your syringe. It will be easier for your petsitter to draw up a dose that's on a line. Just to be completely paranoid, I would also suggest making up a sample syringe for comparison. Use a colored liquid (e.g., milk) so the lines are visible. There have been a few too many times when a petsitter has drawn up the wrong dose. Having a visual comparison will help prevent this kind of mistake. (One member's roommate thought he dosed 0.5u when he'd actually dosed 5.0u. It was not a good night.)
Thanks for the advice! After today, I do agree with you and suspect that 3 units would be fine as well with the dry food out - we are going to completely eliminate the dry food on Wednesday next week when I'll be able to be home with him for several days in a row to monitor. We'll also have the automatic wet food feeder by then. Unfortunately we still only have the pens and can only change the dose by full units so I will probably instruct her to administer 2 units and maybe give him 1.5 cans of wet food - she's usually in for 30 mins and can give him half a can when she arrives and then leave the full can out as she's leaving. That way he will hopefully be more full and eat less of the dry food (here's to hoping - his name is Fat Albert for a reason ).
