renal insufficinecy treatment

It has been a month since I last checked in. I was never able to get the home testing done after the first few checks. My cat was just too difficult. I was so concerned about giving 4 units 2 x/day that I searched and found another vet who did home visits and has a lot of experience with FDM. She had me start checking urine every other day and weighing every couple of days. The Urine results were negative! We changed the insuline to one unit of Glargine 2 x/day then to 1/2 unit 2x/day when strips continued to read negative. He just had a fructosomine test and it was negative. He has stopped the insuline! The bad news is that a CBC blood test was also done and shows renal insufficiency. The vet wants him on kidney food, that means low protein and low posphorus. I will continue to test his urine frequently and keep you posted. LISA

 

Re: remission???

Hi Lisa, and congrats on getting Lorenzo "Off The Juice" (insulin)

Quite a few cats treated with Lantus or Levemir and changed from dry food to low carb canned food go into remission or become "Diet Controlled"

You are right to be concerned about changing to a higher carb food -- you may need to give insulin again (need to test blood sugar)

Hopefully some of the folks here dealing with Renal Insufficiency will chime in with suggestions.

 

Re: remission???

Congratulations on remission! The three things you'll want to do to keep Lorenzo OTJ are:

1. keep him on low-carb food for the rest of his life, as much as you can. (I know kidneys are a concern.)
2. check his BG levels at least once a month, and any time he's acting 'off'. That'll let you catch a diabetic relapse in the earlier stages, as well as possibly giving you early notice of other problems that may crop up.
3. handle any health issues as promptly as possible. Any condition that causes pain, infection or inflammation -- even something as comparatively minor as tartar build-up on the teeth -- can raise BG levels and make Lorenzo a full-fledged diabetic again.


Regarding kidney-safe foods: a lot of diabetic cats have kidney problems, and there are commercial foods that can help with both issues. I'd suggest starting with Melissa and Popcorn's post here entitled "Does your Diabetic Cat have CRF/Kidney Disease? If so... "

 

Re: remission???

Just a comment -- since you have pressing questions about the treatment for Renal Insufficiency, I suggest that you EDIT your first post in include in your TOPIC "Renal Insufficiency treatment" or something like that to attract the attention of people with experience in that area -- also

EDIT your long-ish post to break up the paragraph and add white space

It is hard to read and process all the information when it is in one big block of text

So -- I make line breaks like this to make it easier to read.