Wrong dosage?

Once again I want to thank everyone for their help and encouragement while dealing with this, and apologize for maybe obvious answer questions. I have been reading and reading so I don't have to ask 50 questions a day lol. Brief history, I don't think I have ever introduced myself....I am Samantha and my 13 yr old male is Hidey (yes Hidey, because he hides) He was diagnosed 1/7/14 and since has been on 1 unit 2 x a day. When he was diagnosed he was 561 (alphatrak2). Since then I have switched his dry food (I am slowly getting him off of it) to EVO but am slowly introducing that as well it is 3/4 EVO and 1/4 weight control blue buffalo, so he is getting 1/3 c of dry and 1/3 can of food in the morning and at night. He gets avoderm, and tiki wet food....all no/low carb varieties. I have been getting into the habit of testing at home and luckily he is now getting better at it, and so am I Hidey's numbers have not really dropped. The lowest I have seen is 384 (Alphatrak 2) and that was a half hr ago. In the morning its generally 570's and at night low 500's. How long does it generally take for prozinc to start working or am I not giving Hidey enough? Also, I have been testing on his ear. This may sound like another stupid question but will he always end up with the tiny needle marks in his ear? I feel so bad seeing those little red marks and all I picture is little spots everywhere since they seem to take forever to go away.

 

Make sure that you keep firm pressure on the stuck part of the ear after reading the meter to minimize bruising of the ear. They get less noticeable if you do.
ProZinc is NOT a depot insulin (like Lantus and Levemir are) so you see results fast.
To better present your BG value you should present the values as:

AM or PM PS values. PS is BG before (Pre) shot
Then a + with the number of hours after the. Like+ X 384 where the X would be the number of hours after the shot that yo optained the 384 BG.

Also, most here record the BG isn a spreadsheet (SS). See:
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=50130
That then post a link to the SS in there signature

 

Hi Samantha,

That's great that you're starting to get the hang of home testing! As you get better at it, you will notice the spots less. We thought our poor Eddie's ears looked kind of beat up early on as well, but after just a few weeks, and us getting better at testing, you usually can't tell where we've tested. If you're seeing little red splotches, that's where blood has leaked a tiny bit. You can help this by applying firm pressure to the poke with a cotton ball or piece of gauze to stem the bleeding. You can also use neosporin pain relief (not the cream kind), which will help the pokes heal a bit faster, and help with pain if Hidey's ears are a little tender. Are you using a lancing device? Is the poke going through the ear? We started with the longest setting and are now down to the second shortest setting on our device.

Are the readings you posted from your pre-shots? Have you been able to get any tests mid-cycle, like between 5-7 hours after the shot? It's a lot easier to see if insulin is doing it's job properly if you know how low his BG is going when it's hit its peak effectiveness. I encourage you to pop over to the PZI area of the board and check out a few "condos" so you can see how a cycle looks. Generally, it's going to produce a smile shape - sometimes it's a steeper "smile" and sometimes it's a shallower "smile." A cat's pre-shot numbers can be high even if the dose is too much, rather than too little. This is called bouncing. If the insulin is causing their BG to drop sharply or into lower numbers than they are used to, their liver can release glucagon and other chemicals as a protective measure, which results in a spike in BG. For example, you can see pretty regular bounces on Eddie's spreadsheet at pre-shot time. He's a bouncy boy and many of the cats here are. Every cat is different in how they respond to lower BG numbers, but bouncing is pretty common. Sometimes the best way to deal with bouncing is to actually reduce the dose. If Hidey is staying in those high numbers all day, however, that might mean that his dose needs to be increased.

We had this very issue when we first started insulin. We were bringing Eddie into the vet up to twice a week because each time we got a read at the vet's it was going higher and higher, up into the low 500's even (on a human meter, which would be even higher on the Alphatrak). His dose kept increasing due to the high numbers we were seeing at the office visits. We started home testing a few days after we began administering 3u bid of ProZinc. The night after our first successful test, we realized that Eddie was dropping almost 300 points, and his high numbers at the vet's office were because he was dropping too low at mid-cycle, so his body was fighting back and causing his BG to skyrocket back up by the time of his pre-shot test. We didn't realize this at the time, but we were bringing him to the vet at the time of day when his BG would naturally be its highest anyway, so the vet tests weren't giving us a good idea of what the insulin was actually doing. About three and a half weeks later, we are now at less than half of that dose and are seeing numbers that are just as good if not better than when Eddie was on 3u.

If you haven't already, I also encourage you to set up a spreadsheet like the one you see in my signature for Eddie, so you can more easily see trends and patterns. Other members also look at a cat's spreadsheet when giving dosing advise. If you hop on over to the ProZinc area, you can also get specific advise regarding that type of insulin, since each type has it's own separate protocol. Sue in the ProZinc is incredibly helpful, and there are several other members that are more than willing to jump in and help.

Looking forward to seeing you post Hidey's "condos" in the PZI area!

*I was about to post and I see Larry and the Kitties has already responded. I second what he said as well

 

I think I got the spread sheet set up, don't know if I entered the info correctly or not and for some reason every time I want to open it (click on the link) it makes me download it? I apologize I'm not really computer savvy......heck I tried to upload a picture of Hidey but cant figure out how to make it the right size lol I apologize I do know I need to start testing more, I just got my alphatrak 2 on the 17th and am still getting used to it, that's why I'm trying to test several times today to get on track and see how he's doing with the prozinc.

 

Sorry,I can't help you on the Prozinc question.

Hey,we were all beginners at one point. No apologies needed.

I will help you with your smaller picture question. I'm pointing you to this post called Avatars, from over in the Tech Support forum here, on how to get a picture small enough to use as your avatar. Look at the 3rd reply down, for a step by step guide for those who are less computer savvy, like you said you were.

The link to your SS (spreadsheet) is a read only link. You need to go back into google docs, access your Drive to be able to update any information on your SS. Does that help?

Not sure if you have entered the data on the SS correctly. My computer I'm on right now is so old, the version of Internet Explorer is not supported over on Google. ohmygod_smile

 

You used the Google FDMB one, right? If so, first save it to your favorites. Then on the right hand top corner, choose Share and then in the drop down box, to Anyone with the Link. Then in the left hand corner, choose File. then Publish to the Web. The url that comes up is the one that you copy and paste into your signature.

If that doesn't work, send me a pm (pm button in bottom left hand corner of this post) with your email address and I will set one up for you.

I'd really like to see some numbers. Then I'd be happy to give you some suggestions.