New Member: Meadow

Hi everyone,
Meadow is my asthmatic, diabetic kitty girl. She was diagnosed as diabetic in March of this year. She's approx 11 or 12 years old and weighs 8.75 lbs at the present time. She is severely asthmatic and after 4+ years on Flovent at the top dose, it no longer worked for her, so she began getting Depo shots to control her asthma. About a year ago, she developed pancreatitis, but recovered nicely from that. She was switched to oral prednisolone and after several months, we found the maintenance dose of 2.5mg every other day kept her asthma pretty well controlled. During flairups, she gets 5mg a day until symptoms subside and then she goes back to the maintenance dose. When she had the pancreatitis, her BG level was 328, but the vet didn't seem concerned at that time and figured it was due to her pancreatitis and stress from being hospitalized. She was asymptomatic for the year until her excessive water drinking and urination alerted me to the fact that a vet visit was in order.

In March she was put on Humulin N at 1 unit BID. I kept a sort of log of her levels and she was consistently in the mid 400 range, so after a month she was switched to Lantus at 1 unit BID. That did not seem to get her levels out of the 300 range, so her dose was upped in increments and she is now at 2 units BID.

I'm going a little crazy with all the bouncing BG readings, but folks are telling me that it sometimes takes months for the cat to become regulated. I'm very dumb when it comes to computers and am trying to get the hang of spreadsheets, but I don't seem to get it. Someone on the other message boards made a spreadsheet for me on Google, but I can't seem to add to it or do anything other than read it. But I am keeping a little logbook of the BG levels. I'm hoping I can get this diabetes under control soon. I guess the most important thing is that presently Meadow seems to be feeling good, her asthma is under control and she doesn't seem to be losing any more weight. Thanks for letting me in the group.

Dottie and Meadow
:smile:

 

Welcome! It seems like you are doing very well for Meadow. You are right to be looking at the whole cat - how she acts, plays, grooms, eats.

Here are the instructions for the spreadsheet: http://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16 Maybe that will help.

We have a very active Insulin Support group for Lantus: viewforum.php?f=9 They can give you lots of support for your specific insulin.

You didn't mention what you are feeding Meadow. We think wet lo carb food makes a huge difference in maintaining low bg levels. A vet explains why on this site: http://www.catinfo.org.

This is an international board so there is someone on day or night if you need help or just want to "talk". Glad to have you in our community.

 

Thanks so much for your wonderful welcome, Sue. Is that picture of Oliver? How did you get it to appear there?
To answer your question, Meadow eats a mostly canned food diet of the low carb Fancy Feast pate's and Innova EVO and Wellness with some Pro-Plan. For light snacks during the day, she gets a very small amount of EVO dry food and her special after testing treat is Liv-A-Little freeze dried chicken breast.
Thanks for the link to the spreadsheet instructions. I'll check them out further tomorrow when I have more time. It's past my bedtime now but am waiting to test Meadow one more time before I go to bed.

Dottie and Meadow

 

No. Oliver died at 16 from heart disease. The picture is Niko, our new kitty. I post here to pay it forward because this forum helped me so much with Oliver when he was diabetic and we were terrified. The tech forum will show you how to put up a picture. (they call it an avitar) viewforum.php?f=6 I have to admit it took someone else to do it for me. (I am not very computer savy....)

Food sounds good.

 

Welcome,

Are you home testing?

The trick that you have is that the prednisone (a steroid) can wreak havoc with the BG levels and while you've explained the need for it (I too have one asthmatic kitty - Sydney and a diet controlled diabetic - Maui), you will have to play a balancing act of managing the diabetes AROUND the steroids.

There are others on the lantus forum that do this and they will be able to give more specific help.

However, it's vital that you are home testing as that board is very numbers driven.

I recommend setting up a spreadsheet and linking it to your signature, like I did below.

Here are instructions on how to do that:

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16

I'm interested in hearing more about how the flovent doesn't work anymore for Meadow. As I also belong to the yahoo FAR group and they believe that a cat should always be on flovent, even if using steroids.

 

Sue, I am sorry about Oliver. I've lost 2 cats within the last 10 months, the latest being this past April. It's heartbreaking. Niko is a beauty though. I am sure he has helped to heal your heart a bit. Thanks for the links, They helped with the spreadsheet and as you can see, I was able to figure out the avitar and post Meadow''s picture.

 

Hi Kilary,

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I am home testing. Meadow is such a good girl about all this too. I hope the Lantus people can help me work around her need for pred and the insulin issue. Thanks for the link. It definitely helped me get that spreadsheet up and running.

I was also on the feline asthma boards, but haven't been there since Meadow came off Flovent. She fine on it for several years, but then little by little she would have more and more attacks and the dose would be increased until finally she was having many attacks per day and the wheezing was very bad. Her dose was beyond the "safety" maximum dose and she was still having difficulty breathing. The vet said Flovent can build up a toxicity in the system, so he did not want her dosage to go any higher. So we tried Pred for awhile and brought her Flovent down to the safe dosing again and once off the pred, she would have a terrible time and twice needed ER hospitalization. Add to that fact that it became increasingly more difficult for me to afford the Flovent and the decision was made to just go with the pred since I was wasting money if it wasn't helping her. Albuterol threw her into some sort of fit that was almost seizurelike, so that was out as well. I knew the risk of diabetes was increased once she went on the pred, but I figured that her ability to breathe was well worth the risk. And here we are. It is what it is and now I am just trying to do my best with the situation and keep her as healthy as possible. And I do appreciate all the help given me here so far.

 

The spreadsheet looks great. The lantus users over on the Insulin support group page should be able to give you some ideas with all that data. And good job with the picture. Meadow is lovely.

We rescued both Oliver and Niko from the humane society. They were/are wonderful.

 

Thankks for the explanation about the asthma. Since I am dealing with this as well it is always good to understand other kitties situations and how you came to the decisions you did.

CuriouS how many puffs per day were you giving and assume you were at 220 dose too.

Yes the beans on lantus can help u work the steroids and insulin. Its just takes some creativity is all. And seriously. Breathing trumps diabetes.

 

I just saw this Dottie. I am sorry that I left the message board before making you an owner of that spreadsheet. Please forgive me. You have got it now all by yourself :mrgreen: I am sooooo glad that you found FDMB, it is the BEST PLACE YOU NEVER WANT TO BE!!!

 

Hilary, Meadow was at 3 puffs twice a day with an extra 110 in between. That is even over the maximum dosage advised.

 

No need to apologize, Paige. I was just surprised when they told me you had left since it was only a day or two after you made the spreadsheet for me. Thanks again for doing that!

 

Wow that is a lot.

I give Syd 2 puffs (220) twice a day and that seems to work well with her.