Newly diagnosed

Hello. Our cat Stormy has been diagnosed with diabetes. He is 14 yrs old. He is not overweight & we have always fed him canned food twice daily with little dry food. It has been 2 wks on 1.25 units of lantus twice daily and his BG levels are still very high 300-500. We just purchased a tester and have been checking. Is this normal? He is still not himself, ups & downs...sometimes pacing or just out of it. I feel so bad for him. Is this normal? Sometimes pees in litter/sometimes not. I think we need to increase his dose. We bring him to the vet tomorrow for a full curve.

 

Welcome to the group, I am just a little past 3 weeks since diagnosed with my Princess so I am no expert but will share my experiences, One thing I recently figured out is how much food can make difference!!!! - YOU ARE TAKING HER FOOD AWAY BEFORE TESTING CORRECT???? What are you feeding "Stormy" (note: my mothers nick name lol) Fancy Feast "Classic" pate is one of the better choices, Friskies Pate is a close 2nd., My Princess is on Vetsulin so I am not sure how Lantus compares, but if you look at my "Glucose Chart" in my signature you will see how ours has gone (I strongly suggest you get a chart going), The "Curve" is very important and so it SELF TESTING, I..... like many here use the Walmart Relion Confirm (a human tester) that only needs .3 sample of blood vs. .5 some require. - What meter are you using because the results on an Cat meter will be different than a human meter? I suggest doing her Glucose tests, feed her, and 20 minutes later give her a shot when she has food in her stomach.

I will say it only took a couple of days for my Princess to pop back and be perky, well as perky as she ever was LOL (she had over 500 scores at the vet too), but she never went outside of the litterbox, but dang if I did not need to clean the box daily because of her high water and disposal when her scores were high.

For now I would not worry too much about her glucose results for now, its her curve that is important (look at my first curve I did this week and you can see how much it varies)

PS: Never give her shot again if you think you missed, be careful not to shoot through the to the otherside of the "Tent" as you pull skin to give her a shot, never give her a shot if under 200 (human meter) before her shot, and never feel shy about asking questions. and get started on a spreadsheet chart, probably the most helpful tool to the experts here - http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/

So let us know;

1. Tell us type of Food and how often
2. Did you take her food away 2 hours before testing
3. What type meter she is being tested on
4. Take the dry food away (terrible for diabetic cats)

Its gets easier every day, its not nearly as hard as you fear, you might read up and think you learned it all today, only to feel uneducated tomorrow and start reading again, its normal.

 

Hi and welcome ! my cat was diagnosed about a month back, so am still getting the hang of things. But like @Bryan & Princess mentioned if you start getting regular BG readings that would be great. I am not sure if you have been on the lantus forum , there is a lot of information there on the different protocols etc. Also when looking to discuss dosage you could post on the lantus forum directly, that would probably get more replies. Best of luck and things will get better.

 

Hi and welcome!!

It takes time to get a cat regulated so you will need to be very very patient, is normal that with only a few days of insulin he's still a little bit high, you will have to adjust his dose and slowly he will eventually start going down.

It would help a lot in knowing how he's really doing if you could give us the test results you have

Here we use a spreadsheet that I think is great to help you and the people here to easily see how everything is going, this are the instructions for it http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/

And one more thing I suggest you change the header of your post and take out the GA is usually used for the kitties that have crossed over the rainbow

 

Thank you for your feedback. Stormy is now eating Purina DM, canned. We switched to a no carb Fancy Feast for about 5 days but he seemed more food crazy on it. He gets 3/4 of a can at 6:30am and another 3/4 at 6:30pm. He receives the lantus injection at the same time as eating. He has had no dry food since his diagnosis, and never really ate that much before unless we were out of town. We have never let our cats graze. He is at the vet today for a full curve test. We just recently got the BG tester. We have the Advocate PetTestMonitor. So for our readings, most of them have been 2 hours after eating, between 8:40pm - 10:20pm and range from 460-534. Morning seems a bit lower, 9:40am 396 / 9:19am 291 / & one pre-feeding at 6:18am 430.

 

Is really great that you are starting to test it will make a huge difference for you and him.

It is strongly recommended to withdraw or hold the food two hours before the preshoot test, this is specially important so that when you test you know that the result is not food influenced (even low carb food has an effect ) and you are shure is safe to give insulin, for the mid cycle tests it doesn't matter but is usually god and very useful to get spot checks during the day

Until he's regulated odds are he is going to be very hungry so you may need to schedule a mid day/night snack

 

Thank-you! Good to know about the 2 hour rule.
I asked our vet about giving Stormy snacks in between but she said not to. She said I had to be really strict until he is regulated. I know he would certainly enjoy a couple little snacks.

 

Actually for his pancreas is better if you split the food in several meals during the day that way his body doesn't have one big amount of carbs to deal with, and he doesn't have big peaks , this is even what they recommend for diabetic people to have several small meals during the day and not to have long fasting periods

 

Hi and welcome. There’s a food list if you want food ideas. You want to feed no more than 10% carbs. Lantus is a depot drug so it can take a week to build up tge depot. I strongly suggest you head over to the lantus forum and read each yellow sticky there. There’s lots there which explain how lantus works. I fed small amounts often during tge first half of the cycle. So Max had his food divided into six mini meals.

 

Lilly has been diagnosed since late march 2018. She is all over the place with her numbers but getting the home tester really helped. I also use the Advocate pet test to check her levels. I love the spreadsheet that is used here on this forum. It really helps me SEE where she is. I was gone for much of April so her care fell to family and they did a great job but not the same as consistent regular care from me. Now I'm working hard to get her on a more even keel. I really looked hard at the food chart that is in this site and have her on Tiki Cat now. She loves it and it is mostly either zero or 1-5 carbs. It took a week or so for her to love it but I was determined to get her on a lower carb food. From what I've read, that is pretty critical. Before I switched her she was on DM food from the vet (dry). I learned that it just has too many carbs to ever really get hers under control. So, I worked with her to get her off dry and onto wet. It was hard but she finally is eating well. At least for Lilly, its taking more time than I would like to get her regulated. I keep her on a twice a day feeding, check her levels before she eats and then again an hour after. Its a lot but I really want her to be as well as she can be.

 

Thanks everyone. The vet recommended we increase his Lantus from 1.5 to 2.5. They are watching him today. He went down to the lowest he has been at 15 then spiked up to 20s. Good to know about the Lantus storage shed. I will visit that forum. We had to get an ultrasound on him as he ate ant vomited an entire paper towel. So bizarre. Is he that hungry. No blockages and his kidneys are good which is nice to know.

 

That’s a really big increase in insulin. Here we increase by .25 unless a high dose kitty. I sure hope you will test at home to avoid a hypo. Good to know kidneys are good. They do get really hungry when uncontrolled but also when they drop into dangerously low numbers.

 

It's a huge increment please test him at least once about 2 hours after his shoot (besides the preshoot test) to make sure he isn't going to low, going too low can be seriously dangerous hypos can kill (hypoglycemic episode- very low sugar level in the blood) , please read this information and at least give him a snack (low carb of course) mid cycle to make sure he's not going too low

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/how-to-treat-hypos-they-can-kill-print-this-out.15887/

Allow him to eat a little bit more that what a normal cat would because util he's regulated his body needs more food that's why he's so hungry, the approach of only giving him twice a day is old school and applies more to other types of insulin, Lantus is a long acting insulin, which means that he's low is going to be a few hours after you shoot him not right away, that's the reason among others that is good for him to eat something mid cycle specially with high doses

Also if you can it would be good if you could post your test results

 

He is on carb food, Purina DM. He was at the vet for the day and on 3 units he was at 5 to 8 and then highest 15 which is the best he has been so far. We brought him home yesterday and just decided to do a test today & it was real high at 532. It was just over an hour after he ate so I know the food would have spiked it some but that is much higher than we anticipated on the new dose. We will try another in a couple hours...

 

Sorry in my last post I meant NO carb food.

 

It’s not no carb but is around 7% according to Dr. Lisa’s chart so low carb. It will take time for the depot to build on the new dose.