Jet's IDEXX PZI gone this week..Need new Insulin

Jet, my sweet lovable Tabby is about 8 years old with Diabetes for 5 years. He has been on IDEXX PZI during this time. I was able to buy multiple bottles when it was discontinued but am running out now. I have been reading online trying to determine what's the best solution to replace the IDEXX. I read that compounding is not always consistent which seems unacceptable for insulinn. Jet has been getting 2 units of U40 twice a day for several years and has been doing well. He eats 1 can of Purina canned DM everyday.... spaced out 8 am w/shot, snack at 10, lunch, 2 pm snack, 5 dinner, 8 pm more food w/shot and 10 night time snack. Snack means he gets a smaller amout of the one can I parce out during the day. Does anyone have positive experience when switching your cat from IDEXX PZI to a dependable, safe replacement insuslin? I am so worried about changing this precious little guy's insulin.

 

There are three good options to choose from:

Lantus or levimer - "the L's", I recommend you go to the lantus board to learn more about these insulins as they work VERY differently from PZI.

Prozinc - I believe is the replacement for PZI, I don't know much about it, and do suggest you go to that board and read up on it.

Personally, I used lantus and had very good results with it.

The best thing for you to do is read up on these three insulins, ask questions and then decide.

 

Does the spaced out 8 am with shot happen often? That makes me think your cat is not well regulated and may be getting hypoglycemic. Would you mind elaborating on that, maybe we can help?

PZI BCP is compounded, however I used it on three cats for a couple of years, many many vials worth and there was never a problem with consistency, doses never changed from vial to vial and I knew that because I hometested my cats each day before each shot, morning and night and got a few spot checks. I highly recommend PZI BCP if you want to stay with PZI. I did call Jennifer, the pharmacist/owner of BCP PZI before switching, she was wonderful to talk to and really made me feel comfortable about using the product.

Your vet can get you a free vial of PZI BCP to try, go to the bottom of this page, there's a pdf for your vet to fill out, the vial will be sent directly to the vet along with two other samples of compounded meds if the vet wants to try them for any reason.
http://www.bcpvetpharm.com/products_bovine.htm

However, I did switch to Levemir over a year ago and find my cats are much more comfortable and happy on that. They don't experience the swings like they did on PZI Idexx or PZI BCP. It's a gentle, longer lasting insulin. My cats were/are long time FDs so I chose Levemir over Lantus, but that was my own preference. I believe Lantus works pretty much the same and will be starting to use that on a foster cat I'm getting this weekend who is on Lantus.

 

i recently switched to lantus from pzi idexx and so far it's going pretty good i think. a bit swingy here and there but really not too too much different than when we were on pzi. the biggest problem i have with lantus is it's schedule. it's not anywhere near as flexible as pzi was which puts a little hitch in our life sometimes but it's doable.

fwiw, i have some pzi idexx left that i think i'm ready to part with. a week or so ago i was thinking we were gonna have to switch back from lantus due to schedule difficulties but i think i'll stick with the lantus, maybe. i've got 2 unopened vials that expire 6/2010 and one opened with about 3/4 left that expires 8/2010. let me know if you're interested in it and which part of the country you are in if you are?