New Member borderline diabetes dosing help

Rose developed diabetes last year at 12 years old. Her glucose reading was 256. The vet put her on Novolin N. I worked with a vet and paid them to test every few days. She did not take well to switching to the dry diabetic food from vets. Also, the dose was too high and after a hypo incident, I studied how to feed her and take over the care myself. She became well regulated on two wet pate feedings (several variaties of Merrick and Fancy Feast) 12 hours apart with 2 small dry food snacks. In 3 months she no longer needed insulin shots. Fast forward to today, one year later. Rose is now 13 years old. She still eats like clockwork, but started showing classic diabetic symptoms again: drinking excessively, ravenous, losing weight. Yesterday, I tried 4 times to get a blood sample, but there was always an error. My husband who hates blood, did it for me (what a great Valentine's demonstration of love to me!). Rose's glucose was 242. (Basically same starting point as last time.) I gave her .75 units insulin at 4:30 pm yesterday and within hours, she was her happy playful self again. This morning I gave her .4 units at 9 am, 20 min after eating her food. At first she was fine. Then I had my husband take a blood sample at 2 pm (5+) and it was 56!!!! Yikes!!! So .4 units is too much. Do you all recommend I skip dosing tonight and take a reading in the morning and see if she needs a dose, more like .1 unit!? Your guideline for newbies is not to dose Novolin when glucose at 250. But Rose seems to need insulin since she was at 242 and exhibiting classic diabetic signs. She is basically borderline, so I think she needs a very very low dose, like .1 unit. Should I just do morning dose only since she is borderline?

 

I would consider a gentler longer lasting insulin for Rose like Lantus or prozync. But I’d definitely test her again right before the 12 hour mark as her numbers could have gone back up considerably by then. Are you using a human or pet meter? On a human meter the 56 is okay anything below 50 is a take action number, but on a pet meter that 56 is a take action number meaning give her high carb food to bring her number back up and retest in 20 minutes.

 

I know you mentioned she does well with the 2 feedings, but just so you know, most of use feed our diabetic cats smaller meals throughout the day as it’s usually easier on their pancreas. Something to consider. I’d also work on removing the dry treats completely and switching to low carb treats like freeze dried, baked chicken or even cheese.

 

As far as testing, we have tips to help like warming up her ear, using a larger gauge lancet bevel side up, and treat immediately after to build up positive association.

 

And you may already know this, but diabetic cats can’t process the nutrients in food well that’s why they’re always starving and lose weight. They also burn calories just by peeing since there’s sugar in their urine. I’d recommend you increase her caloric daily content to address the weight loss.

 

Thank you so much!!! It is a human meter, so I guess 56 wasn't devastating. I do really want a longer acting insulin, so I will contact the vet to see about switching to one of the two you mentioned. Interesting about the smaller feedings... the vet was adamant about only 2 feedings a day, 12 hours apart. I felt like she needed more, so i added the snacks on my own. Seems like i need to rethink the feeding times and types of snacks. Rose has a built-in clock and will hold me to whatever feeding schedule i set up. LOL, you can see why the aka princess in the username!!!

 

Hi there,

With Novolin N, it typically hits really hard and fast at the beginning of the cycle so please don't reduce the size of the substantial meal you give before administering insulin. To do so might see Rose drop too low. If she needs extra grub then smaller 'snack' feeds between doses are fine, as you've been doing. Indeed, if you get a reading that's under 90 during the cycle, giving additional low carb food would be good from a safety perspective - doubly so the earlier it is in the cycle. (If lower than 70, medium carb, if lower than 50 follow the hypo guide. Also see suggestions for what to keep in your hypo toolkit.)

It would be great if you could set up one of our shareable spreadsheets to record your insulin doses and BG readings? With that information available we'll be able to make better suggestions in our replies to you. Here are the how-to guides:

How to create a spreadsheet for your cat

How to use your cat's spreadsheet

If you'd like a bit of assistance to get going, just give a shout and we'll find someone to help.


Mogs
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Most people feed about 4 times a day. If you switched to lower carb food you may not need insulin at all. Make sure you take a number before the shoot and before food. If it’s under 200 skip. I would try just low carb food for a little while.