Hi all, our dear peanut has been diagnosed with diabetes a few months ago in May 2020. We started her on prozinc 1 unit 2x/day as she was in the 500's for BG readings at the vet. I'm looking for dosing advice to help get Hannah into a managed state. We got setup with an Alpha Trak 2 testing kit and U40 syringes and felt like we're off to a good start, but Hannah seems to be resistant or we're doing something wrong. The initial dose seemed to be working and brought her numbers down a bit into the 300-400s, but then stalled and started going back up again after a few days. Eventually, I increased the dose, which seemed to again drop the levels a bit, only to jump back up again after a few more days of a downward/flat trend. This cycle has been repeating ever since. She's now up to 5 units every 12 hours, and has only been under 300 for a few cycles this entire time. The vet started us on glycobalance dry food (omg, these vets are awful) and also the wet glycobalance cans to transition her to all wet food. I followed this routine with her until that case was gone and switched to food from the recommendations here. Tiki Cat succulent chicken and Nutro Pate was first, and then we added in Tiki Cat after dark after seeing that they were only like 1-3% carbs. Also, when it's in stock I like to give her Instinct Limited ingredient turkey pate instead of the Tiki AD. If she gets a snack during the day it's either freeze dried or cooked chicken scraps. Hannah is constantly hungry and prowling for food. So much that she has gotten into sealed containers that she suspects food may be in (even new bags of kitty litter). She'll even aggressively swipe or bite food out of my hands (fingers are not exempt!). Her urine output is impressive for a 7 pound cat. I have to scoop every 12-18 hours or she starts peeing outside the box when the litter becomes too saturated in the the "pee area" of the litter box. On average about 5 lbs of litter per day goes in the waste bin! I just want her to feel better and be able to calm down. Hannah's Spreadsheet is here
So we know what the pre-shots are, because you test then. But our dosing protocols need to know the nadir or mid-cycle number. Try to get some more tests in, during the cycle, not just the pre-shot tests. Sprinkle tests around the +5 to +7 timeframe, is that is a usual time for a cat on Prozinc to nadir or go to the lowest number in the cycle. Think of those additional tests as being like books between the 2 bookends (the pre-shot tests). Are you able to do a curve, testing every 2 hours, from 1 pre-shot test to the next pre-shot test? So right now, we don't know if Hannah Banana "Peanut" Bob Ross has been dropping low in the middle of the cycle. Can't really say, but it's possible that Hannah is overdosed and is bouncing up at the pre-shot times. Or, she could be a high dose cat.
Thanks, our vet has been giving us awful advice. I'll be doing thr curve this tomorrow and keep trying to find the nadir.
