Thanks for the add!

Stella is my 14 year old diabetic cat who has been successfully treated for her condition for the last two years. Unfortunately, she is my second diabetic cat; the last passed away in the late 1990's and in the interim there have apparently been improvements to the treatment of this condition from which Stella has profited. She always looks this way. Big Tim Burton type eyes, never really satisfied with anything. Everything is too hot, too cold, too medium to ever be really happy. She was a rescue from under a house at a construction site as a tiny kitten....no sign of a mom or siblings...and has been an indoor cat ever since.

 

Welcome to you and Stella. You will find lots of information and support here on FDMB. She is a beauty! She's a lucky girl that your rescued her and gave her a loving, caring home.

If you have a few minutes would you create a signature so that we can see Stella's pertinent info whenever you post?
Setting up your signature (light grey text under a post). Here's how:
click on your name in the upper right corner of this page
click on "signature" in the menu that drops down
type the following in the box that opens: kitty's name/age/date of diabetes diagnosis/insulin you're using and dosage amount /glucose meter you're using/what (s)he eats/any other meds or health issues (s)he has. You can add your name, and a geographic location (sometimes the country/time zone matters) Be sure to SAVE when you are finished.

You don't mention if you are home testing Stella's blood sugar. If you already are, we use a spreadsheet here to record insulin and testing data, and I can provide the links to the spreadsheet instructions and understanding the grid. That spreadsheet would also be linked to the signature, so that if anything comes up that you need help with, we can see right away the trends and patterns that have gone on before.

Please post any questions, concerns or issues in the Main Health forum HERE , it's more heavily monitored and more eyes on what's going on to get faster response.

Best wishes going forward

 

I will set up the signature momentarily. I do not use a glucose meter because of "technical difficulties" with Stella believing that a fair trade off is a huge fight but am not opposed to using one if there are some suggestions as to how to manage. The vet never recommended that I use one.

 

It seems that many vets don't recommend home testing, and I have no explanation for that, except perhaps they just don't know that much about feline diabetes. I see now that Stella Isabella Rina (love that btw) is on a huge dose of Prozinc now. We can and will help with suggestions for home testing, many new members have trouble at first and the kitties need some conditioning in order for it to become just another routine. Stella may not actually need that big a dose of insulin, and you are in the right place to explore this and find a way to test her blood sugar to see what's going on. You are posting on the Main Health forum..exactly the right place to continue this.

 

She is named that because I found her on the 4th of July (so stars) when she ran out and begged me and my then dog a cavalier for food. Once she was rescued she danced all over the house, so she was a "ballerina" spelled like the name Isabella. I am going to ask the vet about home testing as soon as I can especially if it would help Stella to be more accurately dosed.

 

You don't have to have permission to test, there have been so many members here whose vets either didn't recommend it or were adamantly against it. But, if you read through some of the posts, you can see what a benefit it is. It's a veritable life saver in fact. If some of these members hadn't been home testing, then they couldn't have saved their kitty from a hypoglycemic event. We almost lost one baby just last week, and testing was the reason that the pet parent knew what was going on in the first place.
It's also a good way to evaluate the insulin dose, sometimes bouncing occurs. I just offered this information to another new member whose vet is increasing a large dose already being given:
Here's an explanation of what we call "bouncing". It explains why a kitty's BG can go from low to sky high: (possibly contributing to your kitty's high BG at the high dose he's on)
BG goes low OR lower than usual OR drops too quickly.
Kitty's body panics and thinks there's danger (OMG! My BG is too low!).
Complex physiologic processes take glycogen stored in the liver (I think of it as "bounce fuel"), convert it to glucose and dump it into the bloodstream to counteract the perceived dangerously low BG.
These processes go into overdrive in kitties who are bounce prone and keep the BG propped up varying lengths of time (AKA bouncing).
Bounce prone kitty repeats this until his body learns that healthy low numbers are safe. Some kitties are slow learners.
Too high a dose of insulin can keep them bouncing over and over until the " bounce fuel" runs out and they crash - ie., have a hypo episode. That's why we worry so much about kitties that have had too high a starting dose prescribed by the vet and the owner isn't home testing.

Just something to consider.

 

Thank you so much....I am going to learn how to test her blood sugar.