Testing stats for today and feeding schedule- contemplating Insulin

I've been a pain in the butt on here today but I'm contemplating pushing off starting insulin. I am supposed to start him on 1 unit every 12 hours tomorrow.
A week ago he was diagnosed as diabetic with a 476 in the vets office - prior to the visit he did have increased thirst and urination and was on a terrible diet and ate as much as he wanted . I immediately started him on an all wet diet of 3 oz of fancy feast 3 times a day . Since the change in diet his drinking and urinating as decreased quite a bit and I've been testing all day .. here are his numbers

10:00- 189- pre feeding - wake up
3oz of Food at 11:30
12:00-310 - 30 min after eating
2:00-195- pre feeding
2:00- 3oz of food
4:00 -184

(Eating 9 ounces of fancy feast per day in 3 feedings and a small handful of royal canine glycobalance)

My heart is saying to put off insulin because I feel just changing diet will help but if my heart is wrong i will do whatever i can.

 

If you drop the glycobalance dry food, that will probably help the numbers even more. (Seriously. There was someone here feeding that to his cat, and once he stopped, he was able to drop the insulin dose by 2/3.) If your cat needs something crunchy, I suggest trying PureBites freeze dried chicken (or whichever meat he likes). Are you using a pet meter or a human one? Either way, those numbers are still a bit high but especially so if it is a human meter.

I would probably drop the dry food and see how the numbers do over another couple of days, but at that point, I would not hold off on insulin any longer if the numbers still warrant it. I would not start with a full 1 unit dose though. I think I would start with 1/2 unit twice a day and see how he does on that.

 

It's a human meter . So maybe drop the dry food and and test him in a few days and see where hes at ? I was thinking having around 180 was good?

 

180 is still a bit high. Janet mentioned on one of your other threads that 50-120 is the normal range on a human meter. (By the way, please add to your signature that you use a human meter.) If you are willing to drop the dry food, give him a couple of days without it and see how the numbers are.

I said before that I would probably start with 1/2 unit, but on second thought, you may want to go with 1/4 unit. If you have syringes with 1/2 unit markings, you would have to just 'eye' it, aiming for halfway between the 0 mark and the 1/2 unit mark.

 

Those are very low preshot numbers for a cat not on insulin, if you give insulin when he's already that low and his little body is trying to heal itself he could have a VERY strong reaction like my guy did with just .5 and he was much higher than yours at his Preshot.

If you do decide to start anyway I would definitely NOT give a full unit.

My guy went from mid 300s to 53 the very first time he got .5 back to back. Unfortunately I wasn't good at testing yet so I don't know what happened before that.

Only you are an expert on your cat, if your heart tells you to wait, I would wait.

Research holistic treatments for diabetic cats while you give the new diet and his body a chance to do it's thing.

Exercise is the best way to reverse insulin resistance, so I'd research how that might help too.

Again, if he's never been given insulin before and you don't know how he will react and you're not used to dealing with it all and how to treat hypoglycemia quickly without being nervous, etc... I would trust your heart and give his body a little time to heal itself first but if you feel you must give something, definitely start low and go slow. You could give even less than .5 if you can see a smaller dose on the syringes.

Good luck.

 

I just want to mention that Lantus works a bit differently than ProZinc. Normally, you can give a dose on a lower pre-shot test with Lantus or Levemir than you could with ProZinc without the same risk of a sharp drop like Jay talked about. True, anytime a cat is on insulin, there is a risk of hypoglycemia, but don't be scared off by that. If you exhaust your non-insulin options, and the glucose remains high enough to warrant insulin, don't be afraid to start it. You just start with a very low dose and keep doing the testing like you are to make sure you know the impact and can adjust as needed.

It sounded like you might be game for dropping the dry food. If so, I would love to hear how that goes and if it brings the numbers down even more. So, let us know! Then, when you are ready to make a determination on whether to start insulin, I suggest posting on the Lantus/Levemir forum so you can get input from people actually using those insulins. http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/forums/lantus-basaglar-glargine-and-levemir-detemir.9/