Help please! Accidentally gave unnecessary insulin

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Afton Jenkins

Afton Jenkins

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Hi everyone! New here. Our cat, Lasagna, has been diagnosed with diabetes and we've been treating him for about a month. Current regimen is 2 units twice a day. We are also using the Freestyle Libre to monitor levels. Vet advice was to not give insulin if his numbers are around or below 200 at meal time.

This evening we were rushing around, doing too much, didn't scan before feeding and administering insulin. Realized about 15 min later, scanned, he was at 142. We immediately added more food (higher carb dry food) to his bowl (still has his normal lower carb wet food in it) to try to counteract... Gave him more dry food two hours later. And rubbed honey on his gums.

What else should we do? Do we need to take him to the emergency vet? It's nighttime here, so monitoring him through the middle of the night will be tricky.
 
What type of insulin are you giving? Do you have any more data for two hours after the shot? This may or may not be an emergency.
 
Do you have high carb wet food around? If so, I'd give tsp or two of that, perhaps add a drop of honey/karo and test again in 30 minutes. At the same time, call the ER vet and see if they would be able to take him in. How long for you to get to the ER vet?
 
Wendy&Neko said:
Do you have high carb wet food around? If so, I'd give tsp or two of that, perhaps add a drop of honey/karo and test again in 30 minutes. At the same time, call the ER vet and see if they would be able to take him in. How long for you to get to the ER vet?
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No, we don't have any high carb wet food...
 
Wendy&Neko said:
Do you have high carb wet food around? If so, I'd give tsp or two of that, perhaps add a drop of honey/karo and test again in 30 minutes. At the same time, call the ER vet and see if they would be able to take him in. How long for you to get to the ER vet?
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ER vet is about 30min away
 
Wendy&Neko said:
In future, 2.0 units is too high a dose. We'll deal with that later.
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A few nights ago, we woke up and scanned him, and he'd been reading 'LO' on the freestyle for a couple hours, and he was acting totally fine. We have no idea why that happened, there was nothing abnormal about his food or insulin the previous night...
 
Afton Jenkins said:
No, we don't have any high carb wet food...
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If you don’t have any high carb food, you can give a few drops of honey put into normal food, or rub it on the gums. Honey will wear off within 1 1/2 hours. Have you tested the BG again?


Afton Jenkins said:
A few nights ago, we woke up and scanned him, and he'd been reading 'LO' on the freestyle for a couple hours, and he was acting totally fine. We have no idea why that happened, there was nothing abnormal about his food or insulin the previous night...
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That definitely means you need to reduce the dose.
 
Sugar’s Mama said:
How is Lasagne doing now?
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He's okay, I'm staying up with him and monitoring, encouraging snacking and water drinking, sneaking in some honey. Freestyle Libre is reading ~115 right now.

I don't want to go to the emergency vet unless fully needed because our house is still in a covid quarantine... Everything all at once, right?
 
Afton Jenkins said:
He's okay, I'm staying up with him and monitoring, encouraging snacking and water drinking, sneaking in some honey. Freestyle Libre is reading ~115 right now.

I don't want to go to the emergency vet unless fully needed because our house is still in a covid quarantine... Everything all at once, right?
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Keep monitoring for the whole cycle. I will tag @FrostD about what dose you should reduce to.
Would you like to set up a spreadsheet and signature so we can help you further?
You will find the link for them HERE

Could you remove the 911 now please that you have had help and the BG is improving.
If things deteriorate you can put the 911 back up again.
 
Bron and Sheba (GA) said:
Keep monitoring for the whole cycle. I will tag @FrostD about what dose you should reduce to.
Would you like to set up a spreadsheet and signature so we can help you further?
You will find the link for them HERE

Could you remove the 911 now please that you have had help and the BG is improving.
If things deteriorate you can put the 911 back up again.
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I joined this site in such a frenzy tonight, I had no idea the complexity of the data that people share! This is really impressive.

We've only been on this journey for about a month, so we are quite novice. The vet just switched us on Tuesday from one unit per meal to two units per meal, because Lasagna's glucose numbers were remaining consistently high.
 
I've taken down the 911, cause it sounds like you've managed to stop the drop. Good job! I'd keep testing for a couple hours after your last honey or other higher carb food (dry), to make sure it doesn't wear off and have the numbers go back down again.

We increase or decrease doses by 0.25 units at a time. That means eyeballing on syringes with 1/2 unit markings.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
I've taken down the 911, cause it sounds like you've managed to stop the drop. Good job! I'd keep testing for a couple hours after your last honey or other higher carb food (dry), to make sure it doesn't wear off and have the numbers go back down again.

We increase or decrease doses by 0.25 units at a time. That means eyeballing on syringes with 1/2 unit markings.
Click to expand...

It's swinging back up now... Freestyle libre is reading 239, 5 h 30min post dosage and dinner
 
You couldn't have joined a better forum and the members here are fantastic. There are many experienced members here . If it wasn't for them Tyler wouldn't be in remission today knock on wood.
As Bron suggested I would set up your signature and spreadsheet so we can follow along .
 
Next time you're out I would pick up some med and hc wet foods
Med and High Carb food and some honey



Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Beef Feast in Gravy 20% High Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Chicken Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Turkey Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Chicken and Beef in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Good idea to mark the cans with magic marker how many carbs

Or any on the food chart.

https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/dr-pierson-new-food-
 
To set up your signature which you will see is at the end of everyone's post in gray, click on your name up top and then tap on the word signature and add this information
  • Add info we need to help you:
    • Caregiver & kitty's name
    • DX: Date
    • Name of Insulin (do not include dose or frequency)
    • Name of your meter
    • Diet: "LC wet" or "dry food" or "combo"
    • Dosing: TR or SLGS or Custom (if applicable)
    • DKA or other recent health issue (if applicable)
    • Acro, IAA, or Cushings (if applicable)
    • Spreadsheet link. Please put the signature link on the bottom line of your signature information, on its own, so it is easy to find.
    • Please do not put any information about your location in the signature for security reasons. If you wish to add your country location, please add it to your profile.
Be sure to click the 'Save Changes' button at the bottom. If you need help urgently it is important we know these things at a glance. We don’t want to waste valuable time finding out information.

If you need help setting up the SS just ask ,we have a member that can do it for you in no time
Here is the link if you want to give it a go
https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/how-to-create-a-spreadsheet.241706/
 
Diane Tyler's Mom said:
Next time you're out I would pick up some med and hc wet foods
Med and High Carb food and some honey



Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Beef Feast in Gravy 20% High Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Gourmet Chicken Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Turkey Feast in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Fancy Feast Gravy Lovers Chicken and Beef in Gravy 15% Med Carbs

Good idea to mark the cans with magic marker how many carbs

Or any on the food chart.

https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/dr-pierson-new-food-
Click to expand...
Lasagna only eats Hill's Prescription Urinary Care c/d with stress management food. We used to feed him the dry kibble version, but switched to the wet cans now that he's diabetic. Vet doesn't want to switch him from this urine care food for fear of his UTI issues flaring up... So tonight with this low dip, I gave him dry kibbles since they're slightly higher in carbs than the wet cans.
 
That C/D is 28% carbs, even the wet food version! That's way too high for a diabetic cat. What sort of UTI issues was he having before hand? I had a cat with idiopathic cystitis on C/D when Neko became diabetic, and I had to switch his food because Neko was stealing his. He did fine on the replacement commercially available food, with lots of water added. There is a website written by a vet specializing in feline nutrition. You might want to read her page on urinary issues: https://catinfo.org/feline-urinary-tract-diseases/
 
Hmm. Absent any other data at the moment my best estimate is to go down to 1.25U-1.5U if above 200. Below that you can stall without feeding to see if he is flat/rising; then you have the option of a one-time partial dose or a skip, but we would have to help with that...and need data to do so ;)

Whenever you get a spreadsheet set up with whatever data you have, I'm more than happy to take a look at it.
 
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