Introducing Cheryl & Cloud

Hello to the FDMB forum folk. I am Cheryl and my sugar cat is Cloudy. I'll tell you about his history in this post - then I'll have something to link to when people want to know more of his history.

Cloud showed up in our backyard and was a friendly guy to us humans but aggressive toward other cats. My husband always put out Friskies dry food for the strays and Cloud was eating this food. He kind of made our yard his home and we would see him outdoors and be able to pet him pretty regularly.

After about 2 years, Cloud appeared to be in trouble. He was losing weight and not eating. He started keeping close to our back door and when we realized he was in trouble we took him to the nearest cat hospital where they gave him some tests and an examination. They estimated his age at 7 years. His bloodwork showed him to be positive for FIV, but his real problem was that he was resorbing his teeth and he was in a lot of pain. Two surgeries later, all his teeth were removed and we brought him into our home as our only cat. He settled into a diet of mostly NutroMax canned adult cat food, but he still liked to gum down some of the dry food he used to eat outdoors, and my husband always left some out for him against my wishes (Hubby is home during the day and I am not).

Cloud was mostly pretty healthy as an indoor cat. I'd say a good normal weight for him is around 14 pounds. He was down to 10 pounds when we brought him in, and went up to 15 or 16 pounds (a little porky) after his mouth healed up from surgery. He had occasional problems due to his weakened immune system. Once, a brief bout with fatty liver. In November 2015, we observed him coughing every few days. Our vet x-rayed him and found inflammation in his lungs, and put him on Prednisone. We began tapering him off of it as soon as we could (after 2 weeks), but as you may have already guessed, the prednisone pushed him into diabetes. The diagnosis and Lantus started in early January 2015. He wouldn't eat the Rx food they prescribed, Royal Canin for diabetic cats. He would eat a little of the Rx dry food, and he still likes the NutroMax but it's a little too high in carbs I now realize. I keep trying different canned brands and am still searching for a low carb food he will eat consistently.

At the time of diagnosis, we bought the AlphaTrak2 meter that our vet recommended, but my husband and I proved totally inept at home testing (we had not found this forum). So we took him to the vet every 2 weeks for a blood sugar curve and she slowly upped his insulin dose by half a unit every visit until we were at 2 units BID. Then one visit in late March our vet thought his pancreas had started making insulin again and had us stop giving the Lantus. The month of March was chaotic in our house due to a death in the family and I found myself away from home every weekend for 4 weeks, so I can't say exactly what was going on with my sugar, but I will say my husband has not been the best observer or caregiver.

During his initial treatment with Lantis, Cloud developed some neuropathy in his hind legs (this was probably developing since the Prednisone started); his legs are weak but he does not walk on his hocks. In early April he scared the daylights out of us; he started going into the closet to hide (which he never did before), and he wasn't eating much. He stopped moving around the house. Wouldn't get up to eat, drink or use the litter box. I noticed he seemed to have a fever and we took him to our vet. The vet confirmed his blood glucose was high again and we put him back on insulin. She also gave us an antibiotic to administer for 3 weeks because he appeared to have an upper-respiratory infection.

My husband insisted we be more on purpose about keeping Cloud's BG low to help him get back on his feet. We spent 2 weeks taking him to the litter box 3-4 times a day and hand-feeding him. We felt like maybe he was telling us to let him go, but as long as he would eat for me I couldn't bring myself to give up on him. He had some other issues, first a swollen face, which went away after about 5 days, then one of his ears swelled, and as that started to diminish, his left paw became painful and swollen. My husband didn't want to stress Cloud even more by going back to the vet, so we fought about this but didn't go. The good news is that Cloud is out of the woods, no more swelling, still weak but will get up and walk to the litter box and to the kitchen for food. I've been giving him daily B-12 (the one recommended here for neuropathy) mixed into his food. It's helping - he can climb up and down from the couch again by himself, which he could not do two weeks ago.

When we put him back on Lantus the vet recommended starting at 2 units a day. It may have been reckless but we chose to give 3 units even though we weren't home testing yet, because we could see Cloud wasn't feeling much better on 2 units. My husband can't do the BG testing and isn't good at giving insulin either, his eyesight is really bad and he just can't see what he is doing. So it's on me. But I found this forum and watched the testing videos and I can do it now. (In fact, I think I do it better than they do at the vet's - next time I am there I'm going to give them a tutorial!) I'm not going to naively assume the vet can manage his condition from her office when I am here with him every day. I wish our vet had been firm and insistent that we had to learn to home test.

So having finally taken full responsibility for knowing what is going on in Cloudy's body, here we are, ready to learn and hopefully get better. Sorry if this post is too long!

I've seen some of you have a cat profile on Google Sites - if there is a template for making one, I'll make one for Cloudy. Thank you in advance to all the long-time members of FDMB, this forum has been essential to our household the past month and I am very grateful.

 

Welcome to you Cheryl and your extra sweet kitty, Cloudy. We are so glad you found us. You've come to the right place where you will get the support you need to educate yourself and the courage to do things that you never thought you would or even could. Your kitty is very lucky to have chosen you to be his caregiver. They are so very wise aren't they?

You have taken an important and life saving step in starting to home test and setting up your spreadsheet will help you get a "big picture" of what's going on inside Cloudy. With time, you will learn what to look for and yes it all gets easier with time and experience. The spreadsheet is an invaluable tool for the the people here that I think of as "wise" because they have so much practical in the trenches experience with diabetes in cats.

So take a deep breath and start thinking of your questions. When you have your first set, head on over to the Main Health Forum where we can begin to answer your many questions.

 

I was just looking at your ss, Cheryl, and there are a few things that I'm going to suggest to you
1. One of the first things I did as a new member was learn about the insulin I was using. It will be a good idea for you to begin reading about Lantus by reading here.
2. and then I'll tag a few of the more experienced members @Marje and Gracie and @Chris & China and @julie & punkin (ga) who have been wonderful with helping me learn some critical facts that have helped my Radar feel so much better.

 

Hello and welcome. Cloud sure has been through a lot! Glad you guys decided to adopt him and help him. To make a profile in your google drive just go to new, google doc and then add your text and pictures then copy the link into your signature. Here is more good reading.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/lantus-glargine-levemir-detemir.9/

 

Welcome to you and Cloud WTG in already getting a spreadsheet set up and everything! There is alot of good info here, and you are already well on your way to getting your guy feeling better

 

Welcome to FDMB and telling us Cloudy's story. What a handsome little guy!

I too just peaked at Cloudy's spreadsheet and noted the +6 reading of 53 during the day yesterday which on a pet meter is a warning reference number for the possibility of impending hypoglycemia using a human meter. With the AT2 meter, you need to aim for numbers NOT LOWER THAN 68. I also notice you are not getting any night cycle readings. Many, if not most of us, find our cats BG levels go down at night, so you really need to get some readings in the night cycle. If you can get some around the +3 post shot timeframe, it usually will tell you how active the cycle is going to be and warn of any impending drops to lower than safe numbers.

I would strongly suggest you read up on Lantus as Jan recommended and that you start posting on the Lantus forum HERE for dosing advice tonight to keep Cloud safe.

I'm glad you reduced the dose last night but you may need to reduce further given you are using a pet meter which reads higher than a human meter. All the reference numbers in the documentation on this forum are based on human meter readings unless specifically stated otherwise.

 

Hi Cheryl

Welcome to FDMB to you, Cloud, and your husband. We are just down the road from you in Tucson.

I am one of the members that Jan tagged to pop in. First, a simple thing. You asked about a Profile so the instructions are here. There is a fancy way and a simpler way so choose whichever you prefer.

Thank you very much for doing the spreadsheet so quickly. I’m glad you reduced his dose as 53 on an AT is pretty low. We usually do the dose changes in increments of 0.25u for reductions but sometimes if you are changing foods from dry to low carb canned or raw, etc., there might be a need to reduce the dose further. I think, for now, you can stay at the 3.75u but you want to try and avoid dose hopping. Lantus is dosed primarily on the nadir or peak action (lowest number) with only some consideration given to preshot numbers. While there are some forums doing sliding scale dosing with Lantus, it’s experimental, and we typically do not do it in FDMB. Linda linked the Lantus/Levemir forum so you could read some of the “stickys” at the top of that forum. If he is still eating even a little dry food, you will want to follow the Start Low Go Slow Method for now. Once he is on all wet food, you can decide if you want to switch to the TR Protocol.

As Linda said, it is really important to grab some nighttime tests. You could get a +2 test and a before bed test and start building some data so we can tell how the dose will work. If you think of the spreadsheet as a puzzle, the goal is to fill in blocks so you can see patterns. That doesn’t mean that you have to fill in all, half, or even a third of them but always getting a preshot test and then a few tests during the a.m. cycle and at the very least, a before bed test at night will help. We can tell a lot from random spot checks. A lot of things can happen during a 12 hour cycle so if he starts in yellow and ends in yellow, it doesn’t mean he spent all day there. I’ve seen cats go from 300 to 40 to 300 in one cycle and without the mid-cycle test, the caregiver would have thought the kitty needed more insulin.

It’s usually a good idea to follow this intro with post on the Main Health board to get some of the basics down and then once you feel more comfortable, you can start posting in the Lantus/Levemir Insulin Support Group. Let us know if you have questions!! You can tag us (and we will receive an alert) by putting @ in front of our user names. So if you wanted to tag me, for example, just type @Marje and Gracie and you’ll get a drop down of names to select.

 

I'm happy to help you, but I know these Welcome posts are meant to be primarily a single post introducing a cat. Tag me when you have a post in either Main Health or the Lantus/Lev support group.

Ah, I see Marje just posted saying the same thing. Holler if you want help and I'm happy to help teach you.

 

Thank you to everyone who replied for your encouragement and advice. I will definitely tag people and ask questions in the suggested forums as we get our bearings and will also get an evening reading at least at +2. I am gone 10 hours during the weekdays for work so was happy to get a weekend day curve, but I know I need more data for evening too.