Hello, I'm Jen, Sidney's Mom. Possible Diabetes.

Hi everyone,

I'm totally new to all of this, and I'm here because I'm feeling totally overwhelmed and anxious.
A bit about me: My name is Jen, I'm a work-at-home romance author.
I have two cats, Uno 13, and Sidney. My cat, Sidney, is 12.
He's a little over 12 lbs, and last Wednesday he started vomiting. Vomiting other than a hairball is unusual for Sid. He puked four times in twelve hours before I packed him up for the vet.
He got an anti-nausea shot, take home sulcrafate, and blood work done.
His bloodwork came back with a glucuse level of 20.3 (I'm in Canada). The vet phoned and said it was high, but he wanted to do a urine test in a week (giving time for the levels to lower) to see if it was related to stress from the vet visit. He said he'd not seen a level *that* high for stress, but he wanted to be thorough.
I stopped the Sulcrafate on Monday at his direction, and we did the at home urine test with the special litter yesterday, and I delivered the sample.
The sample had blood in it according to the vet, and had sugar evidence as well.
Today, we take Sid back to the vet to get an antibiotic for the UTI and a fructosamine test, which supposedly determines once and for all if he is diabetic.
None of this makes sense to me, quite honestly. Sid isn't really overweight. He does NOT drink a lot of water, barely anything, really. He pees about four times per day, maybe five tops.
He eats every four hours in a 24 hour period- a half a can of fancy feast pate or chicken and cheese (I alternate). So he isn't really showing "typical" diabetes symptoms.
I'm a bit mentally exhausted over all of this, considering what is likely ahead of us in terms of diagnosis for Sid.
We lost our cat Miss on New Years Day 2018 to acute kidney failure. She was an IBD cat and we spent thousands, and I mean THOUSANDS, keeping her stable, and with various hospital visits.
I'm afraid because I don't have that kind of money to spend on Sidney at the moment. So I'm here, just needing some reassurance, or something, that I can get through this again. That familiar anxious feeling of having a sick animal is all too familiar and I am just stressed to the gills.
Weirdly, other than the vomiting episode, Sid *seems* to be doing okay. He's grooming, enjoying cuddles, an posing, something he likes to do for attention, where he rolls on his back with his feet in the air to get tummy rubs. He's eating his meals. He *is* sleeping a lot, but both my cats are big snoozers.
When they were just on a "feed me, I'm hungry" schedule, he was a LOT more vocal. A lot more picky. Now that I've limited the food to four hours, he's not as vocal and seems to know what to expect.
Anyway, that's our story. We are kind of in limbo mode.
Thanks for listening!

 

Welcome! You will get through this! I think we all felt overwhelmed in the beginning, but the knowledgeable folks here will help you get Sidney on the road to recovery. Come to the Main Health Forum and let us know what the vet says. Hope to see you there!

 

Waving to you from the Kawarthas. There are quite a few Canucks here.

Come over and post about Sidney's history and your concerns in the Feline Health (main forum). Like IBD, Feline Diabetes is a steep learning curve. We can help with that. We can also advise you on how to save as much money as possible, and even possibly save you some vet visits. (In Canada, Lantus insulin is inexpensive but testing strips are not. Human glucometers take cheaper strips than pet glucometers. Most people here use a human glucometer.)

See you in the Feline Health Forum.