Shadow B - Short Visit to the Falls? Rising numbers

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ShadowsMom

ShadowsMom

Member Since 2014
Hello LLers! We are having a hard time controlling Shadow's colitis and I believe that is negatively impacting his numbers. I noticed him drinking more than usual and pawing his water bowl, so I resumed testing last night when I saw things were not improving. His values were:


Value summary: 12/21/2014 PMBG 179, +3=180,+8=115
12/21/2014 AMBG=158, +3=164, +7.75=93 PMBG 121, +4=182 ( I gave him a late 10cc of food at +2, so that likely bumped him up for this one), +8=98


Food info is now on the SS. 5cc=1tsp


How high and for how long do we go before declaring his a failed remission? Do we just support him with insulin until he gets better? Hold off until we find something that works? Any help would be appreciated! Thanks yet again!
 
Hi Hellen.

I'm not an expert - hopefully one of them will be along soon. However, I'd just like to point out that Shadow's pancreas appears to be working - last night it brought his BG down to normal range. If you look at Trixie, some of her "preshot" bgs are also out of range, but they come back down after eating. If Shadow is experiencing pain or discomfort, that could cause the BGs to rise, but that doesn't necessarily mean remission has failed. Hang in there and keep watching, and I'm sure someone that knows more than I will come along and give you better info.

Sending healing vines for that colitis.
 
Thanks, Tricia. That's exactly what I was thinking. The colitis symptoms seem to come in waves for him and it's worse at night. I'll be checking today as well, just to see how he's feeling. I notice that when he's acting normal (chatty, rubbing against his favorite spots and begging for me to hold him) his numbers are normal. When the cramps hit, he sometimes misses the box, they're that severe. I know that can't be good for his numbers. My poor little man!
 
Is there anything the vet suggests for the colitis? You're right that any pain, inflammation, etc. can cause an elevation of numbers. If there's a way to stop the spasms, Shadow's numbers might come right down.
 
The internist she consulted suggested a conservative treatment plan since he has so many complicating factors. We started with probiotics and psyllium husk and since that isn't working, he will likely go back in for more labs to see if they can tell us anything. All of this started just after his last course of antibiotics about an month and a half ago. Right now he's resting comfortably. I hope he stays that way!
 
Those are on a human glucometer, right?

How frequently are you feeding him? If there is anyway to break his meals up so he's eating the same total, but as small and frequent as you can make it, I'd try that. On at least one of those tests he came down after the 10cc meal. Not sure how much total you're feeding him per day, but can you go with the 10cc amounts?

Sometimes people will add a * in the column that the cat eats to denote feeding. That can be helpful to see on the ss.
 
Julie,

All but that last number were listed in the SS, are they not showing for you?

I'll add the feeding time to the SS shortly. I can try smaller feedings, but that doesn't leave me much time for anything else. He generally gets 20cc's each time, last night was the exception since I wanted to see how the values looked 3 hours after feeding. As it stands, he's fed just after AM/PMBG, +1's, 3's, 4's and 8's or 9's. That's 10 times a day... I don't see how I could increase that and still stay sane! :sad:
 
Feeding numbers added to SS. That really does help. Thanks for the suggestion, Julie!

****Noticed I made a couple of mistakes. Fixed now! This is going to take a little getting used to. ;-)
 
i only saw the one BG test for 10/22 and thought you had more. I have a hard time translating text into the spreadsheet when I read BGs in posts. Somehow my head just doesn't do that very well.

what's your gut feeling about what you want to do, Hellen? Are you wanting to restart the insulin? You probably could go to 0.1u again if you want to get a hold of things. With that feeding schedule, it might be easier to be giving insulin. I'm not sure.
 
No worries, Julie. That SS tip will make things a lot clearer for both of us! I like how that's looking.

My gut says to restart the 0.1u until we get his colitis under control. I'm sure that's causing his spikes. I hope that we can get this sorted soon, just so he's comfortable again. Should we start his injections tonight? And do I test every 3-4 hours over the next few days again?
 
i've asked a couple of others for opinions, so hopefully someone else will chime in. I suspect you're right, though, that the colitis is the underlying cause of his BGs coming back up.

I could be persuaded either way - to go ahead and start tonight, or to tinker with feeding to try to get him a little lower. At this point it isn't super clear to me, although he's having a lot of #s out of normal range. If he were mine, I'd probably go ahead and restart with a drop. Yes, it'll take 5-7 days for the depot to "fill" and until then, every 3ish hours or so is a good plan. That's what's suggested on the Tight Reg Prot page for starting out.

In general, with cats coming out of remission the suggestion is to be more aggressive with dosing. Often a cat may have to go as high up as they went previously on insulin. Shadow's #s aren't very far out of range, so you could make a case for getting on it now and trying to keep him from getting used to higher numbers. I'd probably go ahead if he were mine.

Let's see if anyone else is around to offer their 2 cents! :-D
 
Hi there :cool:

Honestly I don't have experience with a situation like this but will share some thoughts.
In my mind it comes down to - would it do any harm to start him back on a drop again vs. would it do any harm not to?
Another consideration is how quickly can the colitis be resolved? A few days, a week?

If it were my kitty I would not want higher numbers gaining any sort of foot hold.
Also, I would not want to stress a pancreas that only recently has returned to full time work.

that's my $0.02, FWIW :cool:
 
ShadowsMom said:
I noticed him ... pawing his water bowl ...
Click to expand...

That might be a sign of nausea. If so, maybe the vet might be able to prescribe something to help? Feeding smaller, more frequent meals helped Saoirse when she had vomiting bouts.
 
We've resumed the insulin at 0.1u. I feel better about that since we really have no idea how long the colitis will take to resolve. I realize it may take a week or so to get him back on track, but his numbers never really dipped too low on that dose even when he was on it full time. Back to the wonderful world of daily condos! :-D

As for the nausea, I considered that, but he's good about asking for meals and his nausea symptom is usually lip licking. He's only had a few episodes of vomiting and some of those could be attributed to a bad pilling experience. I hope he isn't nauseated. That would make him even more miserable!
 
It might be worth it to try ondansetron or cerenia in case nausea is the reason for the higher numbers. I haven't noticed any negative side effects with either one for Max. Sending vines your way.
 
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