When to start insulin?

One of my cats was recently diagnosed. On her first trip to the vet, her reading was at 362 and that was two weeks ago. I changed her diet to can food only and tested her for the first time last night and she tested at 259. How long are you suppose to wait after changing the diet do you begin insulin?

 

Which canned food? Is it on Janet & Binky's list? Here's the "New Canned Food List": http://binkyspage.tripod.com/CanFoodNew.html. There are also an old list and a non-US list, which you can get to through the various links at the top of the page. You are looking for a number of 10 or less in the carbs column.

Let us know what you are feeding (whether or not it is on the list) and we can go from there.

 

I am using that list. I have five cats and they are eating Fancy Feast, 9 Lives, Wellness and Before Grain. They like several different kinds. At the time that Binky was diagnosed, my vet wanted me to go with the Purina DM and begin insulin shots with PZI. He became very defensive when I told him that I was taking my cats off the dry food and and switching to only low carb, high protein can food. I told him I wanted to see what effect the canned food only diet did to her glucose level. He said if I tried the food route, I would need to give it a month, have her retested and then begin the shots. I just wasn't sure if it was a good idea to wait that long.

 

A month sounds too long to me. If a change in diet is going to do the trick all by itself, it usually does so quickly. A drop of only around 100 points in two weeks doesn't sound to me like you are going to be able to avoid insulin. Your numbers aren't very high, so you'll want to start with a very low dose, probably, but I suspect you need to start soon.

It's quite possible that you won't need insulin for a long time. Some kitties get back on track after only a few weeks (or even days) of shots. No guarantees, but that's possible.

That said, I'm not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. I hope that someone with much more experience than I have will come by and comment soon.