Newly diagnosed

my 16 yo (yesterday was her birthday) cat Cyan (breed: korat) was diagnosed with diabetes this week. She had lost 25% of her body with and is 6.3 lbs now. I took her in bc her kitty litter was dark and I suspected UTI. They couldn't confirm it bc her bladder is so tiny but they did give her an injection on antibiotics. She's been hypercalcemic for a couple years and I had tried a couple times to switch her to rx wet food but she flat out refuses. She'd been eating and drinking more and losing weigh so I knew something was wrong. We took x rays and she also has some inflammation in her lungs so now she's taking cyclosporine for the asthma. I've been giving her one unit of insulin lantus twice daily the last couple days and she seems ok. It's suck a small amount though, I don't even feed the syringe plunger moving when I stick her, but surely she's getting it bc the syringe is empty when I'm done. I want to learn to home test and my vet referred me to this website. I switched her to a dry Royal Canin diet I got from the vet and she's eating it. Today I'm going to buy a testing meter off amazon and a friend recommended accuchek Aviva. Hope that's a good one. I wonder how often I'll be checking her? Any tips or advice is appreciated. This is a great resource!

 

Hi there Leslie and I am glad that your doc sent you here as there is a lot of knowledge and experienced people here. Also, very glad you want to learn to home test as it is really important to keep Cyan safe and to know how to adjust the insulin dose. You will want to test before each shot and some additional test in between the 12 hour cycle. Find a place in your home where you will always perform the test and give lots of hugs before and after testing. There are many videos showing you how to test. Here is a picture of where you test on your kitty. Many of us start off by taking our kitties to the spot where you will do the test and just rub their ears and pet them and give them a low carb treat such as Bonita Flakes or freeze dried chicken piece and then let them go. Do that a few times and then your kitty will associate that place and procedure with a treat. See? Then try the testing. Don't be upset if you aren't successful the first time as there is a learning curve.

http://s106.photobucket.com/user/chupie_2006/media/testingear/sweetspot.jpg.html

Here is another good link on Home Testing:http://www.felinediabetes.com/bg-home-test.htm

There are many meters. There is a pet meter called the Alpha Trak2 and human meters. Some use the pet meter because it is what the vets use so the numbers will match up. The meter and strips are expensive though. Most use human meters that can be purchased at any pharmacy. It typically reads a little lower than the pet meter but we have ways of compensating it. Many use Walmart's brand, Relion Micro or Relion Prime, because it only needs a tiny drop of blood. The Prime testing strips are ½ the price of the Micro.

About the lancets: These are used to poke the ear to get blood. There are many different sizes (gauges). It is recommended when you are first starting out to use a 26-28 gauge. Also, it would be a good idea to pick up Neosporin WITH pain reliever to apply on the edge of the ears and don't forget to alternate ears.

Also, diet is very important. You want the carbs to be 10% and under Typically dry food is much to high in carbs. There are a few out there that are acceptable and they are EVO and Young Again. I believe your Royal Canin dry is going to be way to high. We recommend wet food and a lot of us use Fancy Feast Classics , 9-Lies PATES, and Wellness NO GRAIN Here is a food chart that we use and you can look up your and see how high it is. A change to lower carb food can result in a drop in blood glucose (BG) as much as 100 points overnight so it will be very important that you are testing when you switch her diet.

This will get you started and if you have any question, ask away, that is how we all learned. Oh, and Welcome to the best place you never wanted to be!

 

Welcome to the message board, the best place you never wanted to be.

There are 4 things you'll need to manage your kitty's diabetes:
- You - without your commitment, the following won't work.
- Home blood glucose monitoring with an inexpensive human glucometer such as the WalMart Relion Confirm or Target Up and Up (the pet ones will break your budget!). This saves you the cost of going to the vet for curves and done regularly, removes the need for a fructosamine test. All of our insulin guidelines use human glucometer numbers for reference.
- Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as many Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info. If already on insulin, you must be home testing before changing the diet. Food changes should be gradual to avoid GI upsets - 20-25% different food each day until switched. There are 2 low carb, dry, over the counter foods in the US - Evo Cat and Kitten dry found at pet specialty stores and Young Again 0 Carb found online.
- A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir. No insulin lasts 24 hours in the cat, so giving it every 12 hours is optimal for control.

 

Hi Leslie, welcome to FDMB! Your kitty Cyan is beautiful!

Was there a specific reason your vet suggested RC dry for Cyan? I can pretty much guarantee you that RC dry kibble is going to be way too high in carbs for a diabetic kitty. There are many more less expensive, canned foods that are suitable for our sugar cats. The cat info site that the others have suggested is a very extensive listing of some of the more popular foods, listing the percentage of calories from carbs. It is an absolute "go-to" when you are looking for a new food for your kitty!

As BJM and Bobbie said, changes in diet should be done gradually to avoid digestive problems. Switching to a low carb food will also cause Cyan's BG to drop quite a bit; therefore, making the change is not recommended until you are home testing so it can be monitored closely, enabling you to make any dose adjustments necessary and to watch for hypoglycemia ( http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/how-to-treat-hypos-they-can-kill-print-this-out.15887/ and http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/jojo-and-bunnys-hypo-tool-box.2354/ are great explanations of a hypo event and hw to handle it).

The best meter for you to buy is one whose test strips don't make your budget shriek with agony! Test strips can be very expensive, and you will use a lot of them. So check the price of test strips for various different meters before you decide which one to buy, if cost is an issue for you. Other than that, they are all pretty much the same, with the exception of the Alphatrak pet-specific meter.

If you haven't already explored it, here is the link to our forum for Lantus users: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/lantus-glargine-levemir-detemir.9/ You can aways post any questions related to diabetes, dosing, overall health and the like, here in the Health forum, but if you have question about Lantus and dosing you'll probably get faster, more specific answers there.

Happy belated birthday to Cyan!

Lucy

 

Thank you all for the replies! Obviously it seems very important that she be on canned food. Unfortunately I've tried many times in her long life to switch her to wet food and she won't do it. The vet suggested the Royal Canin dry because it's better for her to eat then not eat. They also recommend a dry/wet purina DM combo but not for Cyan as she won't eat the wet food so given that the RC dry was the best prescription diet option they offered. I will look into some of these other dry foods you all have suggested but see how she's doing with her current new diet and insulin first. And then adjust from there while consulting with my vet. My vet Dr. Lori Teller is extremely reputable so am hopeful she'll be helpful in guiding us along. Luckily she's always available to me via email as well. Today I need to pick and order a glucose test kit. I should have done that a few days ago and while she warned me to keep an eye out for hypoglycemia I'm getting nervous. Thanks for all the help!

 

Update: My friend came by today and graciously taught me how to test Cyan. We tested her ear 5.5 hours after her last insulin injection and her number was 104. I used a relion prime human tester. She says that's a good number! I sent my vet an email update so I'll keep testing and see how it goes from here. Maybe once we get a hang of thinks we can give the vet food another shot although I know from past experience to not get my hopes up. For now she's free feeding on the dry RC and just snacking littles bits here and there.