07/14 Blackie AMPS 316

Now THIS is more like it. And her +3 is 260. Will test at +5, and then do the PMPS.

 

That's better, her bounce into the reds didn't last as long this time.

 

No, it didn't. Thank goodness. I'll be testing her at +5 and see what her nadir looks like. It seems that her nadir is about +5 anyway. I'm doing a very short mini curve today.

And I finally was able to test her for ketones last night before going to bed. She's neg.

 

No ketones, that's good. I hope she gives you a nice blue # at +5.

 

She didn't. She gave me a low pink. *sigh* Considering that today is day #6 on this dosage, I'll continue to have patience and see where she ends up in the next few days.

 

My experience with PZI Vet (may be slightly different than ProZinc, but shouldn't be too much different), was that you could get a pretty good sense of a dose on day 2 of that dose. After that, for the most part you are already at steady state for that dose, so though the results can still move around some, I wouldn't expect a dramatic and consistent improvement. Of course anything is possible, but to me the odds are that it just isn't enough insulin.

Unless you are seeing nadirs around 50 - 80 you have room for improvement, and getting more insulin in her should help bring down the #s and help her liver get on board and her pancreas heal if possible. In general I would ignore the slight bouncy #s you might see on a dose raise - unless there is a reason to suspect rebound from the dose being too high (which I don't see signs of here), it's just things shaking themselves out, and IMO it's something to just ignore. The more she sees good #s the sooner that stuff should settle down, but sometimes more of it gets triggered along the way and you just have to put up with it to get to the good stuff.

When they stay in higher #s, they build more resistance to the insulin and their livers & pancreases get further off track, so personally I am a fan of moving fairly quickly through the doses. Even though in theory there may be some benefit to holding for a several days, I don't really see it. The dangers of raising quicker are an unexpected overlap buildup and hypo and/or rebound. I haven't seen that happen very often, and when it has, it's usually b/c someone jumped the dose up by 1u or something all at once. In the tiny 0.2u increments when the #s are still quite high, I don't think there is a big danger of hypo, especially when getting in some spot checks in the early half of the cycle.

What you want is a drop from PS to nadir of at least 50% and as much as maybe 65%, so I think you have some room to go. If you wanted to raise right now by 0.5u units I would totally support that too. To me, the 0.2u raises are for when you are seeing a fair amount of blue #s and just need to fine-tune the #s down a bit more.

Ok, off my soap box for today. :mrgreen: Of course I support whatever you feel is right to do, you need to follow the plan that works for you, but I just want to be sure you know that you have options to raise the dose faster. I don't think it would be high risk. Some people shoot quite a bit more aggressively than even what I'm recommending, and just keep an eye out for lows. Often their kitties seem to do better than those who shoot more conservatively. Don't get me wrong, I was as conservative as it comes when Bix was unregulated. Unfortunately though, I kept him unregulated for quite a while b/c I was so scared of hypo. In hindsight, I wish I had moved more aggressively with his dosing.

Ok, NOW, off my soapbox. :lol:

Hope she is feeling well & you're both having a nice day today!!!

 

Considering before her just recent increase (I'm referring to when she was on the 1.2 dose), she had a blue streak at about 5 days into that dose. This time, she only hit 1 blue # the first day I increased the dosage. The last time was 8 days long, and so far it's only 6 days, with only that 1 blue # day... I guess I'm a "wait and see" kind of person before making another increase. I don't know.... I think I may be waiting to see if she'll do anything further with this 1.4 dose before I decide to increase it to 1.6...