Help me, help my cat

Howdy, I hope that thread title isn't too needy, or emotional, or hysterical. I am not trying to borrow money. Heehee.

I have a ten or eleven year old cat named Daphne. I love her like an insane person, I feel strong fondness and protectiveness for her.

All of a sudden this month we have had health crises, the whole saga is long but the as of today result is, $7000 borrowed money spent (I do have $10,000 pet insurance on her, but, you have to pay out first, make the claim (DOING THAT TODAY) and then wait to get reimbursed) and I can't afford any more hospitalizations as of now...

I am weaning her off of prednisolone for a liver issue that seems to be resolving, she has been treated for diabetes for a week now, first by the vet. The last two days I have been giving her the glargine insulin twice a day, the prednisolone will be tapered off by two weeks from now, I purchased an Alpha Trak2 pet glucose monitoring unit which arrives Tuesday, the vet has her on Hills w/ d weight loss can food, although she is skinny, and doesn't like eating it so well, (vet is rather an idiot in my view, after vicissitudes) so to get her to eat the w/d I have begun mixing it with raw organic ground chicken...she seems okay

Anybody with any advice on any of these issues, please do advise.
As soon as the glucometer comes on Tuesday, I will feel safer.
If I can figure out how to use it, heehee.
Right now, it is hard to tell if her slight malaise is from the reduction of prednisolone or from poorly controlled blood glucose.

Anyway, thanks for reading this, good luck to your cats and please pray for mine, her name is Daphne. She is so nice.

 

Welcome to the forum. You sound just like all of us here so you fit right in.

Starting home testing will be one of the most important things you can do. Since Daphne was on prednisolone there is a good chance that some or all of the diabetes could be attributed to that. There have been a number of people, whose kitties were on steroids for other ailments that went into remission fairly quickly once the steroids were stopped. So keeping a good track of the glucose readings while weaning her off the pred is important, since her insulin needs may very well drop as the steroid clears her system.

As far as food many of the members here use Friskies pates ( not the green lid one) or Fancy Feast pates...not the gravy type, since they are higher in carbs. Prescription foods are not really any better than commercial food and dry food is not recommended for any kitty, diabetic or not.

I am sure you will have more questions as you go along. Since you are using Glargine...which is also called Lantus, this link:

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/lantus-glargine-levemir-detemir.9/

has lots of yellow marked "stickies" that give you good information on Lantus, how it works and lots of other tidbits of information. If you have ANY questions at all about ANYTHING, please post on the Health Forum:

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/feline-health-the-main-forum.28/

since there is a good deal of "traffic" there and you should be able to get some good responses to any questions/concerns you have.

 

Welcome! You've found your people here for sure!

 

Welcome. You and Daphne are in good hands here.

What liver issue does Daphne have? Any other conditions? Why the w/o food, is it the wet or dry food?

 

Saying a little prayer for Daphne. Welcome to you both.




Mogs
.

 

Thank you so much for answering.
My first immediate take-away from your reply is the EXCELLENT IDEA of keeping a written record/diary of her glucose meter readings. I should probably put the time of the injection (obviously they should be at the same time, but just this morning I slept through the alarm for an hour, yikes), and the amount, once the amounts start varying.
Yep, I'ma buy a nice little composition book today and write DAPHNE'S DAILY DIABETES DIARY on the cover, that seems too cute but good luck, heehee.

 

FDMB has created an on-line spreadsheet that you can use. It is colour coded for different glucose levels which makes it an excellent visual guide. Also if you need advice or opinions from the members here, on your dosing or how well the insulin is working, it is shared so that members on here can also view it and see all the data. As well you can e-mail the link to your vet and they will be able o see the day by day data. Here is the link with information on setting up the spreadsheet:

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

If you need any help setting it up just ask and the lady that developed the spreadsheet can get you set up in no time,

 

We have a spreadsheet here we all use for tracking injections and times. It's done in Google sheets and is real time. We would need the info to suggest ideas and advice.

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

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/understanding-the-spreadsheet-grid.156606/

You update it as your day goes on. Some tablets will not allow the updates (kindle) so I use phone to enter it.

You can print it out (I did every 2 weeks) which I found very helpful to visualize the color codes in front of me.

If you have trouble then there are some here who can help. You would attach to your signature so we can all see it.

If you look at other posts you will see links to our sheets. Click on them and it will show you our "diaries"

 

Cross posted Mary Ann.

 

The liver issue is mysterious, I will tell the story.
I was taking her in to the vet to get her teeth cleaned.
The vet calls and says, the cat is too sick to get her teeth cleaned, she is yellow.
Damn, she WAS jaundiced. I hadn't noticed, and maybe only one day in the week previous, had she seemed to be distressed. Daphne is half Siamese, very vocal, she always talks, (she also answers, we can get good call-and-response going) and but that one day, she had sounded distressed and querulous. Other than that, she had just been sleeping a lot, no alarms going off.
Anyways, series of vets thought she had cancer, leukemia, lymphoma, a whole series of explanations for her high bilirubin...none of which panned out after expensive tests, PCR, flow cytometry... meanwhile, she gets less yellow, her lymphocyte issues get better on prednisolone while I am waiting WAITING WAITING on test results for cancer (she has no cancer ultimately, they tried to find some but nope)

(around in here, I personally decide that she doesn't have cancer, and that the explanation was a toxic insult to the liver (BUT LIVER IS STRONG, WE HAVE EXTRA LIVER) just like you can get alcoholic hepatitis/ jaundice and then recover once you stop banging the liver with the booze... my culprit choice was that she got into flypaper glue, one of those RAID flypaper rolls, you twist, extend, hang them up??...she had one stuck to her fur, I washed some glue out, combed some glue out, but, she licked a lot of it as well...this was maybe four weeks before the vet spotted her being yellow...or maybe the glue is nontoxic, she is an indoor cat, that is the only candidate for a toxic exposure I had)

So anyways, Daphne seems fine on the prednisolone, liver and spleen abnormalities resolving on ultrasound, but, then we have polydipsia, I notice her spinal bone getting prominent, she lost 0.2 kilos and she is a small cat, never weighs six pounds...to the vet again, diabetes mellitus treatment and she is released to me Friday three days ago

So, I like my theory of chemical exposure insult to liver, doctors have no alternate theory, and, she is getting over it, just like you would after a one time exposure...her yellow has not started rushing back since the tapering of prednisolone... eventually I'll get another CBC but she just had several during two hospitalizations, all show liver either same- same or getting better

I apologize for this stream of consciousness account...long story short, I am not worried about her liver. We have two more weeks of prednisolone tapering off. To me her liver looks like "a resolving condition" but we shall see

 

NICE. THANKS.
I have to go do some stuff right now.
I will respond better to this and to all the others who have taken the trouble to respond to my thread, but later today.

Sweet cat love and sadness, we all have that in common, ttyl.

 

Interesting. Some things just can't be explained.

 

Tomorrow I have to go wait potentially all day at my buddy's house (he is in the hospital, abscess on his spine, in surgery as we speak, I have access to his place because I am feeding his cats) for the glucose meter to be delivered, that AlphaTrak 2 for pets...I have to use his address to receive the package (complicated postal problems omitted here) then as soon as it arrives I must run home and try it on kitty...I have watched a few videos on how to test the nice cats... I will finally be able to relax (I Think) once I can tell that Daphne is okay, on the meter

I love FELINE DIABETES MESSAGE BOARD...right now all my money is held back for potential cat emergencies, but, once my fear dissipates I want to kick in some cash, truly

Can't wait for the glucose meter... I guess this post was low on content, and emotionally self-absorbed...but, I am thinking a lot of y'all understand ANXIETY OVER THE BELOVED PET yup yup

 

Just a quick note regarding the Alpha Trak......while it's a fine meter, the strips it uses are around $1 EACH.....and we do a lot of testing here!!

Most of us use human meters like the Relion Confirm or Micro meter from WalMart (if you live in the US) and our protocols were all developed using human meters, so there's no reason you have to use the AT if you don't want to.

We like to see tests at least 4 times a day (and if your cat is running low, you'll be testing even more) so that can run into some real significant money......and cats have an annoying way of dropping too low at 2am on a Sunday morning when you've only got a handful of test strips left.

With the Relion meter, you can always stock up at WalMart any day of the week...if you're using the AT, you have to order from your vet or online and wait until you can get them

 

If the flypaper rolls contain permethrin it is highly toxic to cats. It might be worth calling the manufacturer to ask whether any of the active ingredients might cause liver problems in cats.

I'm glad that Daphne is on the mend.


Mogs
.

 

Hi Daphne and Daphne's mom. Some vets are idiots, we have a great one. This is Nigel's story. Diagnosed diabetic, we freak out. We follow all the "rules" but Nigel keeps losing weight. With 9 cats in the house putting the food out at specific times doesn't work so our vet has the courage to say "This isn't working, feed Nigel whatever he wants whenever he wants". He immediately gained weight, his numbers leveled off and we were all happy. Remember, no two cats are the same, meter readings can change from minute to minute and no one likes hospital food! I also think pet meters are a scam, we use an Accu-Chek, needs a much smaller sample than Bayer. That's only one cat story and may not work for you but some rules are meant to bend. Good luck to both of you.

 

I like the AlphaTrak2 meter. But the strips are expensive. I test 3-4 times a day, and I use FreeStyle Lite strips. You can get them from the "bay" online for about $0.50/strip.

 

Predisolone is a steroid. It could by itself be creating artificially high glucose readings, or could be pushing Daphne into a diabetic state.

http://www.mypawsitivelypets.com/2013/01/steroid-induced-diabetes-in-cats.html