Newly Diagnosed.

Hi.
I am the owner of Little One my 9 year old cross Norwegian Forest and a Burmese neutered male.
He has been out of sorts since we returned from holiday in January. His sister is fine fat and round like rugby ball. Little One lost an awful lot of weight as we thought it was due to him missing us. Over the last couple of months he has started putting the weight back on but now we have noticed him walking on his hocks and drinking and eating a lot more than he should. A trip to our vets has confirmed that he has diabetes he has to have 1 injection twice a day to begin with . This was Monday. Early days I know but he hasn't been sick and hasn't peed anywhere he shouldn't. He is just our cat we love him and want him to get better. Thoughts ?
In

 

Hi Dawn welcome to you and Little One. The best way to know how well the insulin is working is to learn to home test Little Ones blood glucose. It is simple to learn and we will be glad to teach you. If you post on the Health forum, with any questions you have, we will be glad to help you get Little One on the road to recovery.

 

Hi Dawn and Little One. Welcome to FDMB.

Receiving a diagnosis of feline diabetes can be scary and overwhelming. However, it is something that can be managed and Little One can have many more years with you. There are three things that will help you managed his diabetes.

First is diet. A low carb, high protein canned or raw food diet is essential. Almost all dry foods are high in carbs and you should try to switch both Little One's and his sister's diet to canned and/or raw food. The change will be beneficial to both. It will help lower Little One's glucose levels and possibly prevent his sister from developing diabetes. You do not need to feed the prescription food that your vet may try to sell you. Many of us feed our cats Fancy Feast or Friskies canned food. The Pate flavors are lower than carbs than any of the ones that contain gravy.

Next is insulin. Most cats respond better to longer acting insulins than short acting ones. The long acting insulins include Lantus, Levemir, PZI and ProZinc. Lantus and Levemir are human insulins and you will buy these from your pharmacy. If your vet prescribes either of these, ask for a prescription for pens instead of a vial. With the vial, it will become ineffective long before you can use all of it in the vial. The pens will allow you to use almost every drop. ProZinc and PZI are pet insulins and you will order these through your vets office. With any insulin you want to start with a low dose, 1/2 to 1 unit twice a day. If it needs to be increase, it will be done over several weeks and we recommend by only increasing it 1/2 unit at a time. Don't worry, we can help you decide if a dose change may be needed.

The third is hometesting. This means testing Little One's blood glucose before every shot and also some test in between shots. This will help you know how well the dose is working. It also will help prevent you from giving insulin if his glucose levels are too low. If insulin is given when the glucose is too low, this could cause hypoglycemia - which is very dangerous. Plus hometesting will eliminate the unneeded trips to the vet just to have them test Little One's blood.

Don't worry, we can teach you all about this. Start reading through the boards and post any questions you may have. We have all been where you are now and are here to help you.

 

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 keeps your cat safe and 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. We record them on a shareable grid; instructions are here.

- 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 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.

 

Read the info posted above and let the experts here guide you! The best thing I can say with 100% confidence, it really does get so much easier. I was a disaster at first, then after awhile it just became routine, like brushing your teeth. You are going to be a pro sooner than you think! And the silver lining is, once you have the hang of it, I feel as if it creates a very special bond between you and your fur ball. Hang in there!

 

Welcome Little One! (Cute name)