7/3 Guinness PM 153|+3 141

Good Morning Lantus Land.

Guinness had a nice blue night and morning, so not knowing exactly what I am doing at this point, I elected to lower his dose again to 10 units from 10.5u. He's been very lovey and meowy this am and seems happy in this range of mid-100's, so that's where I am going to shot for to start with.

Thank you everyone for all the awesome information on Acro. I'm still trying to absorb it all and have to find some time outside of my family obligations to sit and read through it.

I'm hoping to call the vet referred specialist on Tuesday to discuss treatment options, but I may have already decided in my head where we are headed. I'm not sure yet, so I do still want to speak with them.

One question that keeps nagging me is did he have this tumor the first time we were here two years ago? He went OTJ in a month after being on insulin and never went higher than 2 units. If he did have the tumor and that's what caused the diabetes then, is it possible he could OTJ again with the tumor? If he didn't have the tumor then and he was just a normal diabetic cat from being overweight and eating too much dry, should I really be treating him as a non-diabetic cat with a normal, functioning pancreas and not letting his numbers go green? He could still be a diabetic with a screwed up pancreas underneath the hormone excreting tumor...This is what fills my head right now. :shock:

I've been asked a couple of time what his test result number was.. IGF-1 test was 209. I didn't read the lab interpretation results but will email my vet for them on Tuesday.

Happy Holiday weekend to all!

Re: 6/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173 Reduced dose again

I agree with Julie -- there's no way to know if Guinness was a diabetic before the pituitary tumor developed. It could have been that what you saw the first time was a brief rev up of the tumor and it stopped secreting for a while. It may have been as you outlined -- Guinness developed FD as the tumor was developing and now there may be just the acro or there may be both acro and FD. I think this is a really good question and if it's your plan to talk to the vet in San Diego, it's a really good question to ask.

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I just saw this post in my 7/1 condo Sienne, thank you for the insight. Good stuff to think about!

Re: 6/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

Can anyone give me an idea of the best HC food to keep on hand for an Acro cat? I have some Fancy Feast Gravy varieties but looking at the Janet and Binky list I see there are some with some big carbs like a Walmart version, etc. some of the Friskies look pretty good too. Is there a standard one that everyone who has an Acro cat tends to use and finds very effective? Thanks! I will be venturing out later to stock up.

Re: 6/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

Linda, Laurie (Mr Tinkles mom) told me about 9lives sliced beef in gravy (24%) I believe, I can't get much gravy out of it but it does seem to help Tommy when he needs it. I just give him a little bit of the food to go with it.
I hope this helps!
I've been thinking about you both a lot lately..
This is a 7/3 post? I was just curious. I did the same thing last month and didn't catch it until the end of the day :smile:

Re: 6/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

Another food question:

with the HC food, should I be shooting for highest carb, but lowest phosphorous and protein? Low phos for protecting his kidney function and low protein as to not aggravate his pancreatitis? Or should I just not pay attention to the protein and phosphorous since I hopefully will only be feeding this occassionally and get an easy, cheap gravy laden can of Friskies?

Re: 6/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

linda and guinness said:

One question that keeps nagging me is did he have this tumor the first time we were here two years ago? He went OTJ in a month after being on insulin and never went higher than 2 units. If he did have the tumor and that's what caused the diabetes then, is it possible he could OTJ again with the tumor? If he didn't have the tumor then and he was just a normal diabetic cat from being overweight and eating too much dry, should I really be treating him as a non-diabetic cat with a normal, functioning pancreas and not letting his numbers go green? He could still be a diabetic with a screwed up pancreas underneath the hormone excreting tumor...This is what fills my head right now. :shock:

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I don't think it is possible to answer the question about whether he had the tumor the first time he was here. We have seen acro cats go OTJ before - a few of the cats that had the CSU treatment eventually went OTJ, and another cat that didn't have the treatment (I believe it was Carolynn's Fletcher) went on and off the juice a few times as his tumor's output changed. Most acro cats don't seem to go OTJ and stay there, though.

If Guinness did have acro the first time here, as far as I know that would be the first time that we had an acro come in, do a short stint on a low dose of insulin, go OTJ and stay OTJ for a long time, then come back on a higher dose. That's not to say it couldn't happen, but I wonder if either he did have the tumor but it was in a very inactive phase, or if he was just a regular diabetic then and the acromegaly developed later. I don't understand acromegaly well enough to know how it starts or whether it would progress that way.

To answer the part of your question about how to treat him now, my best advice is to start gathering data (again) and find out what works for Guinness. Find out how much of a bump you get from low carb food and from various % of high carb foods. See how easy or how hard he is to bump up with food. Maybe do some food tests to see if his pancreas does bring his numbers down after eating. I suspect that he does have a pancreas that functions to at least some degree because he was OTJ for so long. That's not really different than a lot of the cats here, though. Many of the cats here have a pancreas that works at least some of the time - that's how we are able to get them OTJ. We're used to dealing with that, but there will be some work needed on your part to determine how Guinness responds to carbs. Once you know what it takes to control his cycle, then you will be able to decide whether you are comfortable with green.

That's my 2 cents. Good luck!

Re: 7/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

i would also think that you already have some info, linda. you know what high carb food you gave him before the diagnosis arrived, and you know how much you gave him to pull him up. for now, that's probably a great starting bit of data - and you can add to it.

i haven't yet had to give any high carb food to punkin since he was diagnosed, but i think we just figured out that he got 1 can of it when the vet tech came a couple of weeks ago while we were in yosemite. there was a 1/2 can in the fridge and i wondered who opened it. i think punkin got a whole can and anya got 1/2 can, but looking at the ss i can't tell one bit of difference in his numbers.

that makes me think, now that you've brought up the issue (i hadn't put 2+2 together until this moment) that i should probably get something higher carb. if he ate that whole can and his numbers are same old same old . . . but there's also karo to factor in. if i were giving high carb food and not getting enough of a reaction, i'd pull out a slug of karo to help things along.

you have a lot on your mind right now. these are great numbers that guinness has today, i hope you can relax and just enjoy it for the moment. he's safe.

oh yeah, and i saw on either yesterday or the day before's post sienne added that i'd given you info on the surgery treatment. i didn't realize that, although it may have just been in the pile of research links that i'd found. more people have done the radiation treatment successfully - if i were in a position to do that one, like lived near denver, that's probably what i'd do.

Re: 7/3 Guinness AM 163|+3 173|+6 142 Reduced dose again

See? I told you Julie was an awesome acro mom. Hope Guinness continues to do well.

Re: 7/3 Guinness PM 153 Dramatically reduced dose

Thank you all for the loads of information and thoughts, I greatly appreciate it.

I feel I've gotten the HC food thing figured out and just went with the Grilled Fancy Feast that I used the other night to pull up his 59. It worked well and he responded well to it, especially when I added a drop of Karo.

Today he had great numbers and surfed the 100's and acted like his old self. He even wrestled with his brother which he hasn't done in months. at PMPS he was a 153 and I reviewed some information and took a deep breath and decided to dramatically drop his dose from 10u to 5 units. If he shoots back up to the sky, I can do what I have to do to even him out again, but if he plunges to the ocean floor, I may not be able to bring him back up. It was a slightly uninformed gut decision.

I have to tell my pet sitter in the next couple of days the hours I need her to come to feed and shoot. I think since I now have this Acro information that I am going to have her skip two am shots. I think it is safer in the long run since she can't test and won't know his #'s. He will get an am shot from me before we leave, a pm shot from her 12 hours later and then no am. She will shoot the pm that night and then no am again the next day. I will be home that night to test and shoot and see how he's doing. If he's way up there, I can always use the R to even him out or bring him down and then start increasing his Lantus dose accordingly to get us back on track.

Does anyone have any thoughts about this plan? I have to schedule my time with her (she has other clients), so I really can't wait until next week to make the plan, I have to figure it out now. Thank you for the input.

Falling already at +2 and +3 will keep up on the testing tonight since I will be home.

if you look at punkin's ss, you can see we skipped or shot 1/2 dose a couple of times. on 6/15 i gave punkin 1/2 dose because there was the possibility of the oral surgery that day that didn't happen. gave me a good experiment day, though. his numbers really didn't look much different that day than other days. i think it's the power of the mighty shed, that keeps on giving. hahahaha, suddenly i'm thinking of the energizer bunny. talk about the power of ads!

anyway, my point is that i think skipping the morning shot while you're gone isn't going to be a disaster. maybe libby or ? can comment on it as well. seems to me like a good plan, especially since he's not going to be tested in between.

Geez Linda, you have a LOT on your plate!!! It makes me feeling like a really idiot for bellyaching about what I have going on!!

Good luck with everything going on!! I sure hope you continue to post condos so I can keep in touch with you and Guinness!! You're always missed!!