Hello! So thankful for this site!

Hello all,

My name is Amanda and my 17.5 year old girl Gizmo just got diagnosed a little over a week ago on 03/30 with diabetes with a glucose of 507 and early kidney disease and has a history of pancreatitis. I am so glad I have found this sight as I have found a lot of valuable information already for diabetes. I would like to thank all that have shared their experiences and knowledge as it has helped give me a better understanding of all this.

 

Welcome

 

thank you Janet for the info. I had a very keen interest to test my kitty's glucose at home but my vet said the human glucose meters are not very accurate for cats/ can you provide any insight on this? I am honestly prepared to do what ever it is at this point to save her.

 

Human meters are not calibrated to feline blood, so they won't give you the same readings as your vet, however they will still tell you if your cat is high or low. They will give you similar readings to a pet meter at the lower end and be farther apart at high levels.

Normal numbers on a human meter is 50-120
Normal on a pet meter it's 68-150

So a 50 on a human meter is about the same as a 68 on a pet meter. However when you get into high numbers the difference is greater. A 350 on a human meter might be a 450 or more on a pet meter. Either way the cat is too high.

Now if you are like me and really prefer the same numbers the vet would get then go with an Alphatrak. The downside of that is that the strips are about a dollar each. HOWEVER there are strips we have recently found made by the same company for a human meter called insulinx strips that are very affordable and are pretty accurate in the Alphatrak. (I've been running comparisons this week).

Whichever way you decide to go home testing is so so important and we see it literally saving cats lives on here on very frequently.

 

Welcome

 

Welcome! We'll all encourage you to try home testing. It's the best way to help your kitty and nowhere near as scary as you might think.