Rosie - Burmese - Newly diagnosed

Hi everyone Keryn and Rosie here.

Rosie is a burmese who is 2 weeks away from her 14th birthday.

Rosie was diagnosed yesterday and we've already had to learn a lot quickly! This forum has already been very useful in learning about DM management in cats so I'm very appreciative.

Now that Rosie has had a stable 24hrs and hubby and I have both been taught to inject and sample blood we are now 'on our own' to dose and inject insulin unsupervised.

I'll see the vet in 48hrs with Rosie's log book and we can call the vet at any stage but it's nice to know there are a community of people to seek advice from.

Below is a photo of my girl feeling quite unwell hopefully she'll be feeling much better soon.

 

Hi Keryn and Rosie.....what a gorgeous girl. Burmese kitties are beautiful natured cats.
Welcome to the forum. I am glad we have been able to help you. I am so glad your vet is happy for you to home test the blood sugars.
Can you tell us a bit about Rosie please?
What type of insulin and dose is she getting?
What type of meter are you using?
Are you feeding a low carb wet diet?
There is a couple of things you could do that would help us help you. If you could set up your signature please, it would tell us about Rosie without us having to ask you every time we help. It will appear below every one of your posts. To set it up.....go to the top right of this page and click on your user name. Choose signature and tell us Rosie's and your name, her date of diagnosis, type of insulin and meter, type of food fed, any other illnesses and medications, country you live in and weight. Then Save.
Also you might like to set up the spreadsheet where you can document all the BSL ( blood sugar levels). It is a great SS and we look at it each time we help you. Here is the link. If you have any trouble, shout, and someone will help you.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/

Here is a link to the FAQ page which you might find interesting.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/health-links-faqs-about-feline-diabetes.14/

Ask as many questions as you like, we are very happy to help. This is the welcome page so you might like to post next time in the main forum where there are lots more people to help you. Here is the link
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/feline-health-the-main-forum.28/

Please let us know how you get on with the vet visit.
Bron

 

Welcome! You have come to the right place for support and a lot of good advice on managing diabetes for your girl. It is overwhelming at first, but after awhile it will get easier. It is nice you have your husband to help, makes it easier to have a helper with all this. And an early happy birthday to Rosie

 

Hi Keryn! Glad you and Rosie found us. And that picture!!! I want to just scritch her head. Awww.

Best wishes on this new journey for you both! There is so much support here.

 

Thanks for the welcome messages. I'm definitely getting the scritches in, I need her to trust that I won't stab her every time she comes near me!
She's a good girl but this morning she was ravenous and didn't want to sit still for testing. I managed to inject her insulin while she was eating her breakfast!

Hopefully my signature is set up ok now.

 

Yes the signature is great thanks Keryn. Which country do you live in? We have Gourmet Delight foods here in Australia.
I am going to tag @Rachel as she is experienced with caninsulin. I think 1 unit is the dose most people start with, with caninsulin but she will be able to tell you.
You can give her a small low carb treat as you test the blood sugar to distract her if she is starving.

 

Oh yes sorry, Australia I was running out of characters. I haven't done the spreadsheet up yet, I was hoping my bsl meter would sync with my phone but users of the app say it's incompatible with my android version so I'll get that done later.

The vet will review her info Monday so I imagine her dose will change once she stabilizes.

Great tip about the snack. I image the forum will have a thread about snacks so I'll check it out.

Foodwise the vet was getting some DM food in (not sure if wet or dry) but I think the the gourmet delight ones might be ok anyway. I've seen something about the low carb foods and think it was listed.

 

Hi Keryn and Rosie! So glad you found us! Yes, most cats start out on caninsulin at 1 unit. You're giving 1.7 units, is that right? We'd be happy to help you out with dosing questions. Can I ask since you're home testing, what kind of numbers have you been getting?

 

Hi Keryn, when I saw the Gourmet Delight food mentioned I wondered if you came from Australia because I have not seen that food mentioned in any other country. I live in Sydney, where do you live?
There are several types of food you can use here in Australia. Have you seen the Weruva 'cats in the kitchen website'. All of their canned food is low carb and the pouches are suitable for some higher carb food for when Rosie drops low. Weruva has several other types within the brand but the cats in the kitchen is the only ones we can get out here as far as I know. They are located at Petbarn stores. I used the canned Weruva for Sheba before I swapped to raw. Here is the link. Look around the site for the pouches and the ingredient list
https://weruva.com/nutrition-landing/citk-ni/
Fancy feast classics that have a gold band around the top are low carb too. Found at Woolworths, Coles and Petbarn and most pet stores.
I have forgotten a couple of other brand names but when I go in next to WW I'll have a look.
I would opt for one of those foods over the prescription diets as they are higher carb and no better for the cat.

Is your meter a pet meter or a human meter? I haven't heard of that one before.
Most vets here in Australia give Lantus insulin to cats now so I am a bit surprised your vet is still using Caninsulin which is an insulin for dogs. It was used for cats until a more suitable one were found. Lantus is a human insulin but is recognised as one of t he best insulins for cats. Itis a longer acting, gentler action insulin than Caninsulin is. I would ask your vet if you can swap over to Lantus if I were you. Caninsulin drops the blood sugars quickly and doesn't last 12 hours whereas Lantus lasts 12 to 14 hours and has a more gently onset.. you will have a greater chance of getting her into better numbers with Lantus, although some people continue with the caninsulin, but a lot end up swapping over to one of the longer lasting insulins.

For Low carb snacks I used to give Sheba chicken stock I cooked up with bones(no salt or anything else added) and I froze it in ice cube Trays then into plastic bags and got out as needed. Other people cook some chicken breast and cut into small pieces, freeze and use for treats. You could also use small pieces of meat. I think a lot of the treats that are available in stores for cats/dogs are high carb.
I'm looking forward to seeing Rosie's SS and curve tomorrow.

 

Yes that's right, 1.7 or 2 depending on her bsl result. The vet will review this dose tomorrow. I have now created a spreadsheet and linked it to my signature. This spreadsheet will be VERY handy! I can update it on my phone and share it with my vet. It also has space to write notes, the little booklet didn't have enough space to write in. Thank you to the members who have created this!!

 

I am in the Lockyer Valley QLD. These are great suggestions for food, thank you. The vet has already ordered it in for me so I'll give it a try.
The meter is a human metre, I was very fortunate to have been given a brand new one, my vet has compared the reading with hers so that we can get an idea of the difference in the readings. I may look at getting one like the vet has so that it can read from the smaller sample size.
Thank you for the tip about the insulin! I'll ask the vet about this. Perhaps they didn't have any other in stock at the time. I think I am going to cook up some chicken for treats, she loves poached chicken.

 

Hi all, just here to update my signature! We met with an internal medicine specialist today who has prescribed Lantus to Rosie. Thanks to this group I was well prepared with data and knowledge to support my request. They are so impressed by the spreadsheet that this forum provided me with. So thanks everyone and I look forward to posting an update soon on how she is going with the change in insulin.

 

Good to hear from you Keryn.
I’m glad the apt went well with the specialist and Rosie is now on Lantus!
When you start Lantus can you leave a line inbetween the other insulin and Lantus on the SS please so we can see where you start the Lantus.?
Try and get some inbetween tests if you can to see how low Lantus takes Rosie.
Did the specialist say to stay on the initial dose for 5 days unless she drops low. And I would recommend only going up in 1/4 unit increments if you have to increase.
Welcome back!

 

Glad to be back, I took a little break from the forum while I've been in this frustrating holding pattern.

She will be on 1.5 for a couple of weeks then we'll move to 2 weeks of 24hr bgl monitoring to fine tune the dose. I now have a Junior Star insulin pen so I can have accurate dosing in 1/2 unit measures.

The specialist actually said I could skip monitoring her bgl for a week and I told her that my anxiety would never allow that and that I'd be ignoring that advice, she laughed and said she completly understood!

I suppose I better get myself over to the Lantus forum and say g'day

 

I can never understand vets saying skip testing....it just doesn't make sense.. head in the sand attitude I think.
What is the Junior Star insulin Pen? I don't know that one.

 

It's dangerous!

This is the junior star, of course Rosie jumped in the pic.

 

Can you tell me the brand name of the Junior star please?

 

Brand is Sanofi, I can grab a photo of the box if you like.

 

“JuniorSTAR® (Sanofi, Paris, France; manufactured by Haselmeier, Stuttgart, Germany) is a reusable, half-unit pen with an injection dose range between 1 and 30 U. It can be used with all insulins manufactured by Sanofi (insulin glargine [Lantus®], insulin glulisine [Apidra®], and biphasic insulin isophane [Insuman®]; Sanofi, Paris, France). The pen is also available in 3 different colors (blue, red and silver), enabling users to restrict a type of insulin to a specific color. While all JuniorSTAR colored-variations can be used with any Sanofi insulin, the user can select a different colored pen for each insulin depending on their own preference. This will be advantageous to the users administering multiple insulin types, as facilitating differentiation might help prevent injection of the wrong insulin type.10An easy dial-back process is also an important feature,11 which may prevent any dose dialing errors.”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4604544/

Does this help you any?

 

Thanks! That’s interesting

 

My concern though is that if the OP is using this pen and not syringes, that does not allow for 1/4u dosing....?

 

In the USA disposable insulin cartridges for reusable pens are no longer sold. When lantus was first introduced in the USA a reusable pen (only one unit increments) and cartridges were availavle and I used the cartridges since they were a little less expensive than the disposable pens.