Newbie Grammy50 on 8 units Prozinc BID

Hi Grammy50,

I wanted to give you your own thread.

Grammy50 said:
just found this website searching for info about Prozinc. My 13 year cat Buddy was diagnosed about 4 months ago. We nearly lost him before he began to respond to treatment. Truly, he's only just begining to thrive again. I've begun to become concerned that he's not responding well to the Prozinc though. We're finally gaining weight again (became alarmingly gaunt hated his food, hated the shots, would hide at mealtimes..... it was traumatic for all.) He's up to 8 units twice a day, eats 1/2 cup Hills w/d dry And 1/2 to 3/4 can wet twice daily. This was a muscular not fat 19 lb cat (neutered)before illness now down to 10 lb--has gained one back! See my alarm. Most kitties I see on the Prozinc are on only 3 or 4. Should we be considering a different insulin?

Hi and Welcome grammy50 & Buddy,

Yes 8 units twice a day is alot of insulin, please come back and tell us about yourselves. We can help get you started.

How did you get to 8 units? his weight loss is from the diabetes, their little bodies can't process the food properly so they are starving.

There is alot to learn, at the top of this forum you can read the stickies about Prozinc. You don't need to cange insulin, but you will want to look at changing the food and the insulin dose. You will also want to learn to home test Buddy so you will be able to get his blood sugar numbers at home instead of paying the vet to do it for you, plus it is much less stressful for Buddy if you do it at home.

If you go to the health board to the section that says new people start here there is alot of great information for you to start out.

Welcome aboard.

Oh I get it now, good idea Robin! Hopefully Grammy50 will see this.

Yes 8u is quite high. The dry W/D is HC, and probably requires more insulin than cats that are just on LC canned, but still it is high enough to be scary to me at least. Bix was on dry food that was lower carb and needed around 4 or 5 units (that was exclusively dry food). Once I got him on LC canned he needed more like 1.5 units. The W/D is higher carb though than what he was on, so could be driving his #s higher.

If you can change to all LC wet food that is ideal, but if you do so PLEASE reduce his dose. It could be the W/D right now is keeping him from having a hypo incident, so I wouldn't want you to take the food away unless the dose is significantly lower.

Do you have any BG #s that you can post? Are you hometesting? That will really help you figure out what is going on. Even if not though, you should be able to call the vet and get the #s from them for any tests they have done, and what the progress was to get to this dose. If you can post whatever you can, that will really help people give you the best possible advice.

If you haven't already, you may want to post on the Health forum. You will get a lot of general information there about how to hometest (if you aren't), food choices, etc. There is more traffic over there, but not everyone uses the same insulin, so that's the benefit to posting here. You may want to try posting both places for the moment.

welcome grammy50...please post here so we can help you...i'll go check pzi and see if your there yet.

where the heck is grammy50? i can't seem to find her anywhere....

I know, I can't either. I never saw her on health. I pulled her post out of the Prozinc thread.