? How much time to give an insulin?

Turning to you guys for help again!
In about two weeks Maury will have been on insulin (ProZinc) for 3 months. I'm wondering how much time I should give the ProZinc to show some better signs of improvement before asking to switch insulin's. I wanted to give the ProZinc a shot because I had a new vial but I don't want to let more time pass while risking my boy being able to get better sooner if I switch. It will be worth not using the entire vial up if a different insulin would help him feel better, sooner. Hope that makes sense.

I've been getting more discouraged on his progress with seeing some new ProZinc members' kitty's are doing so well in a short time. Don't get me wrong! I'm very happy for them! I just want my boy to start feeling better too and do what is best for him.

 

I wish I could help but I'm interested to see people's opinions. Sending love!

 

I will preface all of this by saying that I have no personal experience with ProZinc, and don't consider myself an expert in FD in general, so take everything I say with a grain of salt-- but here are my thoughts.

I don't know that there's any hard-and-fast rule about how long to stick with a particular insulin. Three months seems like a good trial to me, so if you want to give another insulin a try, I think you can justify it. On the other hand, looking at your spreadsheet, it's not clear to me that ProZinc got a fair trial. It seems like Maury was kept on the same dose for a while, even as it wasn't giving good results. It's possible that some glucose toxicity has set in, which means there's more work ahead no matter what insulin you are using.

Others may have more specific observations/interpretations, sorry I can't be more helpful than just saying "maybe!". I will say, if you do decide to switch insulins, I'd recommend Lantus, for several reasons but chief among them is the fact that the Lantus community here is very large and very active. If Maury ends up being a non-standard FD case, those are the folks you want on your side trying to help puzzle things out, for sure!

Good luck, whatever you decide!

 

Thanks Nan. I know he was on the lower dose for a longer time. Had issues with first vet, then after I got him to another vet I injured myself and couldn't test him or do a curve =(. Mostly recovered after 3rd week from injury. Finally got curve to 2nd vet then she increased his dose. I know the vet now is also a big Lantus fan and she wasn't thrilled he was put on prozinc.
After 2 weeks the first vet told me he was a "complicated case" but second vet said they couldn't tell that just after 2 weeks. Hoping to get some more thoughts. Just want what is best for my baby boy.

 

I agree with what Nan said. Although you have been on Prozinc for 3 months I only see data for a few weeks and you were holding doses a bit long.(I do the same for various reasons). If you still have Prozinc left, try being a bit more aggressive, but if you see no progress by the time your bottle is nearing the end, consider switching. Remember to order Lantus from Canada may take some time, others can give more info on that. What I did was found a pharmacy that sold me one pen so I could get started while I waited for my order. There are also a few trustworthy people selling Lantus in the Supply Closet Forum. I'll tag @Bobbie And Bubba as she is one that made the switch.

ETA Also, @Kris & Teasel just made the switch so is familiar with both insulins.

 

@Yong looking at your signature, are you still feeding Friskies and DM dry? If so you may try lower carb options.

 

Does Maury have any other health problem like bad teeth or ears?
I ask since you are not getting consistent response to the insulin.

 

Hey there, I did make the switch from ProZinc to Lantus after 7 months . I believe I have read somewhere here on the boards to give an insulin about 6 months before making the switch to another one but I am not sure if that is an absolute or just an approximate time frame.

One thing that popped out to me was that you are feeding DM dry and I think it is rather high in carbs but I am not sure . That is something you should check into as we say that wet lower carb food ( under 10%) is the best to get good control. If Maury will eat the wet food, I would try to transition off the dry and give all his daily calories in low carb wet food.
JMHO

You are seeing some nice drops on this dose of 3 units like the night before last night you saw almost a 200 drop in the first 3 hours. So you are getting some action and it would be good if you could get some more PM cycle tests in especially like a cycle like the night before last when there was that big drop. It would be good to see how low the insulin did take him. The next morning, ( yesterday morning ) he was back in the blacks again, so he went lower than he is used to going and bounced.

After you gather some more data and make sure that he is only getting low carb food and you still want to switch to another insulin like Lantus or Levemir, you could post on that forum and seek guidance.

Hope this helps.

 

Sharon, I do plan to switch the DM dry food to Young Again Zero or Epigen 90 (I think 6%). The Friskies he gets are 8% or 9% or less for his meals.

Larry, not really bad teeth. Just had a little build up which the first vet was able to clean off pretty fast. Ears are very clean. Only other health issue brought to my attention was some degree of cardiomyopathy/ heart murmur.

 

Good to switch to a lower carb dry. The Friskies is under 10 carbs (as far as we know, since they won't give us any updated info to calculate from), but some cats that are carb sensitive, do better with even lower carb numbers. Just tossing out some ideas to try.