help..

hello everyone i am very new to this and i am not really sure what i am doing. i have so many questions i just dont know how to ask them.. my kitty Squishy was just diagnosed 2 weeks ago, and this has been the most stressful emotional 2 weeks of my life. ok i guess i will start with my squishy is 6 years old, he is on the PZI insulin. We started out at 1 unit every 24 hours, and we are now at 3 units every 24 hours. Tonight i messed up his shot and i think i went through the other side of his skin because his fur was wet when i went to rub the spot where i give him his shot. i know i am not to give him the shot again and just wait till his next dose is due, but it really made me doubt myself. i feel like i am hurting him. he has tried to bite me when i give him his shot and sometimes he flinches pretty bad. i am not sure if my vet has treated any other diabetic cats so i am feel that i am little mis-informed about some things. any advise for beginners would be great. i do feed him dry food but i have just started mixing his dry food with his wet food. i have read on here that a wet food diet is better and i used the list when i bought his wet food. please help i am scared, confused, and feel hopeless like this will never get any easier.

hi sugar, first breath ok?
let's start with this...are you testing his bg's?
Lori

no i am not testing them. i am not sure how to go about doing that. or what and how to ask my vet about it. i have read a little on it, but i am really lost with the whole thing.

ok, we all start out scared and confused....you wil be doing this like a pro in a week, i promise.
i want you to either get your self a human glucometer if you want i can get you a newbie kit which will have almost everything you need to get started. it's great your on our list of low carb foods. everything under 7-10 carbs right, no more crunchies ok, never.
brb with a newbie kit info.
do not shoot again for right now ok.

yes i know not to shoot again. do i need to feed him only wet food? and if so. i work from 10 to 7. how do i go about feeding him when changing from free feeding to just wet feeding?

well, feed him right before you leave and right when you get home...is he a little piggy and eats everything you put down immediatly or can you leave a little extra with a teaspoon on water to make it moist for a few hours?
YES wet only,,no more crunches and if you do shoot without testing no more than one UNIT

do you know why your vet had you increase dose? what did he tell you the bg #'s were? has squishy been tested for ketones?

he is kind of a piggy but not so much. he always eats the wet food i put in front of him, it seems like he just snacks on the dry food i am leaving out for him. so tomorrow morning when i get up i should only give him one unit and feed him a can of wet food? and then when i get home feed him another can of wet food and only give him one unit? i am currently suppose to give him 3 units in the am and 3 units in the pm. they told me his bg was still high like in the 300 to 400 hundred range, but at one point in the cure it was at like 211. and no i dont believe he has been tested for that. what is it?

honey that is NOT high, not high enough for that dose. and the numbers will go down dramatically on the proper diet.. what food did you get, did you check the carb count on the list and see if they were under 10 carbs, i like less than 7 carbs.
how is the cat? is he hungry, thirsty all the time, how is his fur? is he playful or lethargic?

umm i got him the fancy feast wet food. i am not sure what the carb count is i just know i found the list on this website. he does not seem hungry. he eats but its not like he is starving. and he does play, but he sleeps more i wouldnt say he is lethargic, but maybe i am wrong he does lay around a lot, but it does not seem like he is laying around doing nothing any more then before. he walks around and he has never had a hard time walking or it has never seemed like he is stumbling. his water intake has slowed down some, but i feel he still does drink more then the average healthy cat.

Yes, it gets easier. But it is a steep learning curve at first. But you can do it and we will help. When we first came on, we read and reread and copied the pages of what we had read. It takes a while to understand but this is a very treatable disease.

Here are some links for hometesting. http://www.sugarcats.net/sites/harry/bgtest.htm ( a good site with beginning info) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zE12-4fVn8 ( A video that shows you how it is done). The safest way to keep him safe is to know what his blood glucose levels are before you shoot and at the lowest point in his cycle. With PZI, this is usually about 6 hours after the shot.

If I were you, I would not change his diet over to all wet lo carb until you are hometesting. When we changed Oliver over from wet to dry, he went down 100 points overnight. If we had given him his usual dose, we would have overdosed him.

i believe the home testing would help a lot. it seems everyone on here recommends it. how do i get what i need for that again?

if you look at that food chart you got from this site, over to the right it gives the carb count of every single flavor of every single can of food. sue i already recommended that she lower her dose from 3u to 1u, if she goes wet she can go to skinny u until she gets the testing material.
hoping cindy may be able to set her up.

Lots of people like the ReliOn from Walmart. It is cheap and has the cheapest strips. (the strips are what are most expensive) You can buy any human glucometer that sips the blood and only requires a tiny amount. With other brands, you can get the strips off ebay for half the price of drug stores. You also need lancets to poke the ear with. Those are the absolute necessities. It also helps to make a rice sack to warm the ear so the blood flows better (thinnnish sock filled with regular rice heated till very warm but not hot in microwave) and something to poke against (some people like a cotton ball or folded kleenix. We liked a tiny makeup sponge.) Get some lo carb treats so that you give a reward each time you test - successful or not. You can pick up freeze dried meat or fish or bonito flakes at a pet store or just boil up some chicken breasts and cut into small pieces.

Check out the sites I gave you - they have great info on specifics.

ok, you need a human glucometer (one touch, aviva, whatever at walmart)
you need the test strips that go with that meter. (later will teach you how to get them cheaper)
a box of lancets,
cotton balls.
rice sock if you can get one (to warm up ears)
and a lesson in doing the pokie. poke the kitty on the ear to draw tiny drop of blood.

i just looked at the chart and almost all of the ones i got are 7 and under.

GREAT, now if you eliminate the dry food you may see as much as 100 point drop in bg's.
that's why i don't want you to shoot the 3u. your cat could hypo and get very very sick.
until your testing i'd try a skinny unit. that's just shy of a unit.

i will be going to wal mart to get all of these things and talking to my vet when i go on friday about home testing.

this has been very helpful. i will be back very very soon. good night and thank you so much.

just to let you know the vets make alot of money off of you NOT hometesting so you have to bring your cat in all the time for curves and shoot blind. hopefully your vet is not like that but a sad number of them are. also they don't think they can explain hometesting to you...that's why we are here. so...don't let the vet discourage you. also your cat's #'s are always higher at the vet as he is stressed out being there.
he may recommend to high a dose, seems like he already has.

I agree with what everyone else has said about low-carb food and starting to home-test; those are what will give the most control over Squishy's diabetes and the best chance at remission. Remission isn't always possible, but if it occurs then Squishy's diabetes will be controlled solely by his diet; you won't need to give him any insulin.


As for vets not telling their clients to home-test, there are a couple of reasons for that. First off, in veterinary school, vets are taught to test blood by taking a sample from a vein. They know from their own experience that reliably tapping a vein is difficult. They also know that repeatedly tapping a vein causes scarring (think 'junkie with collapsed vein' here), which makes it harder to treat the cat for potentially serious conditions later on. So, from experience, a vet knows that home blood testing is difficult and dangerous.

While support for home-testing is growing, there aren't a lot of journal articles or panels at symposiums on the benefits of home-testing, so many vets are simply uneducated in this matter. If your vet is one of the uneducated, you can help him/her by explaining that we test using blood from capillaries in the ear, which is neither difficult nor dangerous. And a number of folks have converted their vets (or at least overcome their resistance) by bringing in their home glucometers and testing the blood sugar levels at the same time as the vet and comparing results.

Sugar,
Hello and welcome.

It is overwhelming at first, dealing with feline diabetes. But it does get better, I promise. Just try to take it one step at a time. There are many here who are happy to share their extensive experience with fd.

Lori, Sue, and JJ have given you some wonderful advice.

I may have missed it in earlier posts, but does Squishy have any other health issues? He's young, which is a good thing; it makes the possibility of remission much greater.

Hometesting is a life-saver. Many vets haven't read the newer literature regarding testing, and low-carb; so they just don't know about it. Remember, this is your cat, and you are ultimately responsible for his well-being. Our vet has began promoting these all-important steps early this year after attending a conference where a leading fd researcher reported on the success that these newer approaches give.
Its likely your vet will be either uninterested, or even against hometesting. This doesn't mean you cannot do it; there are many benefits and absolutely no bad consequences to testing your Squish's bgs at home.

I just wanted to welcome you to the community, and tell you that it does get easier. Take some time to read all the info on the site--it does take a while to get through it all. Please remember there are so many wonderful people here who are happy to help; after all, we were all once new to this whole sugar dance.

You have gotten a lot of great advice about food and hometesting ..... welcome to our forum!

One thing I would like to point out - giving insulin only once a day is not the usual protocol for any insulin with cats. PZI/ProZinc has a duration of 8-12 hours usually, so kitty is basically spending half the day without the help of insulin. Also, going from 1 unit to 3 units within only 3 weeks is quite a jump! Unfortunately, we have seen several stories on here of vets that think they can regulate a cat in 1 or 2 weeks, which is just not possible.

Most people on here will advise you to start low and go slow. This means 1 unit twice a day for at least 5 days. Test before each shot and sometime in between shots to see how low kitty goes and then evaluate whether a dose increase is needed. Most of the time, dose increases are only 0.5 units at a time. This way kitty has some time to get used to a dose and you can get a good idea of what is going on with his body.

We use the relion confirm meter from Walmart as well. The meter is cheap (like $10), test strips are one of the cheapest on the market, and the meter is pretty accurate. Once you get the meter, you can set up a spreadsheet on google docs to help keep track of the numbers, and you can also link it to your signature so we can help you out with dosing advice or curve interpretation. Here is a link to the tech part of the forum that will give you step by step instructions on how to create a spreadsheet and attach it to your signature: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=16

Remember - there is no silly question! We are all here to help get our kitties feeling better and to provide support to their 'staff' :mrgreen:

Okay, yes, Kelly & Oscar are completely correct: 99.99% of cats out there need insulin twice a day -- their metabolisms are simply too fast to keep insulin for 24 hours. I completely missed the once-a-day shooting, and thank you Kelly for catching that! I agree with starting over: go back to one unit, but give it twice a day. I'd definitely also learn to home-test, so that you can give the best care possible to Squishy.