Weekend Scare

Hello there! Norman and I were about a bit on the old boards last summer shortly after he was diagnosed. It's been an interesting year, to say the least. Norman's been doing great and has been OTJ since October. Since I am diabetic as well, he and I share a meter...and on the whole, his sugar levels have been better than mine have been. The last week or so, I've noticed his sugars have been creeping up on one end of the day and then leveling back out overnight. I talked with his vet on Friday who agreed with my plan to remove all dry food from his diet unless he was having a low (he had been having two very small snacks a day of dry food and doing well up to this point), replace it with low-carb, high-protein snacks (yay for freeze-dried salmon), and keep an eye on his sugars, with instructions to call back if things didn't settle back out in relatively prompt order. He was fine on Saturday, blood sugars right where we wanted them. On Sunday, his pre-breakfast sugar was fine. About 2 PM, he started pestering for a snack, and it was about time for one, so I gave him some of his salmon. About an hour after that, Norman started vomiting. Now that's not entirely unusual for a cat...but for him to vomit 4 or 5 times in a very short period of time is. When he did that, I check his sugar and it was in the high 280's. :shock: DH and I kept observing him and checking his sugar every few hours...because he'd been OTJ for so long, I only had my insulin in the house and nothing that was suitable for Norman. I could tell as time passed by his body language and behavior that he was not feeling well. At about 8 PM, his sugar read 409. By that point, we were beginning to consider running him to the e-vet, as he hasn't had sugars like that in nearly a year. But we held off just a little longer, because he seemed to "brighten up" a bit. At 10 PM, we checked him one more time before bed, and got a sugar in the 380's - not great by any stretch, but better than it was. We decided that if his sugar was coming down, Norman could probably hold out until he could see our regular vet in the morning. All three of us retired to bed. At 4 this morning, I was awakened by Norman's usual "breakfast now" routine. I checked his sugar at 5 AM, and it was completely back to normal, just like it had been on Saturday. Behaviorally, he was acting like nothing had ever happened. So I called the vet and made him an appointment for a checkup, resolved to keep a tight eye on his blood sugar today, and told Norman he shouldn't scare Mommy like that. :lol:

Quite a scare for me and DH - and here's hoping I don't see a repeat performance before Dr. B can give Norman his checkup. Anyone have any idea what might have caused such a rapid but relatively short-term spike like that?

 

I think for starters, I would not feed whatever you gave at 2pm yesterday - I would toss it in the trash. At least, put them away for a few weeks, then test him again with a small bit if you want to keep them. I'd toss them, just in case there was something in that batch.

There are plenty of healthy snacks you can give - I use plain old fresh chicken. Two of mine eat the chicken raw (it's the same chicken I eat myself, so I hope it would be safe), and another kitty has to have it steamed and diced small.
I should mention that none of my cats like anything with salmon in it; they don't even like canned salmon. As well, many do not give fish often, maybe a couple times a week.

You could also divide his daily regular food intake into more servings but smaller and that could help with his need for that 2pm snack.

 

What insulin are you using?

Many of us here use Lantus (glargine) or Levemir (detemir) with excellent results. Humulin N is not so good -- doesn't last long enough in cats.

Have your kitty checked for infections or dental problems -- either can cause blood sugar to rise.

Also, my cats have been having a lot of hairballs lately -- that can be stressful and cause vomiting. Is that a possibility?

 

A cat's blood glucose can go high any time they don't feel well - I imagine that happens to people, too. So I wouldn't be surprised at a higher than normal reading after vomiting so much, no matter what made him throw-up (the snack or hairball). If his numbers hadn't gone down, I would have suspected an infection of some sort since he's been off the juice for so long. If it happens again, I'd call my vet.

 

Well, he's going in for a checkup this weekend...it was about time for that anyway. I figure him getting the once-over certainly won't hurt, just in case there's an infection lurking somewhere I wasn't previously aware of. His sugars have been great ever since that scary stretch of hours on Sunday. So I'm still testing him a few extra times a day to make sure they stay good and keeping an eye on him till his checkup.

 

Could have been a stuck hairball made him vomit, then the stress of all the vomit made his BGs rise. As others have said, stress, sickness and infection raise BGs. If you both were stressed watching Norman, that too could have contributed to higher numbers.

Cats can feel our stress and often react to it, so maybe that helped contribute to the higher numbers too.