so much to learn and so little time

Hi everyone, my name is Andy.
My 11 y.o. mn Bombay mix was diagnosed about a month ago. Tried diet change for 1 week, he hated the prescription food, went KTA and we almost lost him. Now we are in what seems like a long hard process of getting him regulated on Lantus.
I have gotten the Alphatrak 2 as well as a Reli-on meter.
We were slowly increasing his dose from 1 iu (at 2 iu now) and i think he may be bouncing today.
This has led me to join this wonderful forum that i've been lurking on for 3 weeks now. Thank you all who have already posted so much useful real world information, and to all those that will answer my many questions to come ;-)

 

Welcome, we're happy to help!

 

Hi there and welcome. You are on the right track with diet change and home testing. You might want to post in the Lantus forum if you haven't all ready. Those peeps are the experts on Lantus. Good luck to your kitty.

 

Welcome to FDMB.
Its great you've got your meters ready. How has home testing been going? It really helps to warm and massage the ear to get good blood flow. Also, if you have difficulty, get some lancets labeled for alternate site testing (26-28 gauge) as they are a tad thicker and more likely to get a blood drop when starting out.

Check my signature link Secondary Monitoring Tools for some additional assessments you can make to evaluate your cat, particularly urine or blood ketone testing, since he's already had an episode of diabetic ketoacidosis.

Important note: dose adjustments are mad based on the nadir, the lowest glucose post-shot. This should stay above 50 mg/dL on a human meter, and 68 mg/dL on and AlphaTrak when following the Tight Regulation protocol, and above 90 mg/dL when following the Start Low, Go Slow protocol.

 

Home testing I've got down pat...took a week or so to get real good at it. Test and shot in under 10 min, he is just a teddy bear through it all ;-)
Biggest problem is, his brother refuses the idea of mealtimes and won't even LOOk at wet food, so he unfortunately is still free feeding on dry food (Wellness Core though...is there anything better?) along with Blue Wilderness and Wild Pursuit canned twice a day (3-4oz total).

 

It's hard when the civvie cat won't get on the same program. My civvie wants to graze all day and Bubba would eat his leftover food if I left it down.

 

Hi Andy. I have 12 civies that also do not like the change in feeding routine. If you need to feed dry, check out Young Again Zero Carb, sold on line, or Evo(although some say Evo raised their kitties BG's). I couldn't afford the Young Again for so many cats, so I do like Bobbie said, and pick up their food. Once and awhile I'll put Colin in a room and put down food for the others. They are getting more used to no free feeding. Good luck.

 

Here is an online calculator you can use to get an estimate of the calories from each of protein, fat, and carbohydrates.
Once you have that, divide the calories from carbohydrate by the total calories and multiply by 100 for the percent of calories from carbohydrate.
Ideally, you want that below 10 percent.

 

Did an experiment and put the Core dry up the other night, Pimp's BG was 180 in the morning but his brother Hustler was ANGWY!
Bit the bullet and ordered a bag of Young Again.
Still gathering data from the meters and organizing it for his SS. Coming soon!

 

Keep posting!

 

let's see if i did this right:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Hklvu0mknkcjaUjPFg7TI-lZvo0j0YX03-CZVlDCsIQ/pubhtml

 

Yep, I can view it!! Good job!!!

 

Added some previous data and some more notes to the SS