7/19 Max +4 (night) 191 +11 147 Amps 151 +6 140

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Hi Dale!!!

First, here is your condo from yesterday: 7/18 Condo

An interesting discussion in yesterday's condo and I have to wholeheartedly agree with Sienne about Somogyi. In her and Jill's post, it's important to note that you cannot overdose a cat if you are taking them up per the protocol. But you can have a resulting overdose by not taking reductions when they earn them or taking too small of reductions. I also agree that you don't deal with bouncing by decreasing the dose.

I have gotten into this situation with Gracie very recently; I took her up according to protocol, but in giving reductions, I have perhaps shaved a little too often when I should have taken a full .25u reduction. There are only two ways to go if you don't know if a cat is overdose....up until you hit a breakthrough or down. With this recent scenario with Gracie, I went up because I don't like the thought of taking her down, being wrong about the overdose, and then having really high numbers as I work back up. If I take her up and she hits a breakthrough, I can control it with food and then reduce her until her cycles look like what they should. And that is what happened....I increased her dose, she hit a breakthrough pretty quickly, and then I gave her a .25u reduction. Now I wait and let her earn the next one....and her cycles are starting to look more like normal lev cycles instead of wonky lev cycles.

I'm glad to see Max coming down today.....but I would not be surprised if he needs more insulin. I'd see how he does tonight and be sure you get a few test esp mid cycle and, if you can, a later cycle test like +10 or +11. If he doesn't get down into green but bounces back up, I'd take his dose up tomorrow.

I'm sorry I missed your response the other night. But I wanted to address it.

max&emmasmommie said:
A healing crisis? All the herbal supplements are for Max's CRF: chronic renal failure/disease. I had been giving the herbs to him consistently a while ago, but I had become rather lax about it around the beginning of May. Then, the cat sitter did it religiously for about a week from June 27 to July 4. My husband came home and gave him none of the herbs for week. I gave him one dose of all the herbs yesterday morning mixed in his food except the Renal Support pill. He didn't eat that pill yesterday, but he ate it this morning.

The Herbs: The vet has prescribed solidago (goldenrod) pills, and said to give one a day. He also prescribed Rehmannia 8 tincture, and said to give 0.2 ccs twice a day. Both are homeopathic, herbal remedies. Here's an article about the use of Rehmannia 8 in pets: http://www.itmonline.org/articles/rehma ... _eight.htm.

Additionally, he prescribed Standard Process brand Feline Renal Support pills, and said to give two a day. The ingredients are: bovine kidney PMG™ extract, bovine kidney, bovine liver, veal bone PMG™ extract, bone meal, defatted wheat germ, bovine and ovine spleen, buckwheat leaf juice and seed, Emblica officinalis, oat flour, pea vine juice, bovine adrenal Cytosol™ extract, ribonucleic acid, alfalfa juice, bovine heart PMG™ extract, kidney bean extract, Strombus gigas, Tillandsia usneoides, rice bran, porcine duodenum, beet leaf juice, beet root, and extract of Rhizopus oryzae grown on Tillandsia usneoides and beet root.
Other Ingredients: Honey and calcium stearate as tableting aids. Minerals: Calcium 3.5 mg / tablet Phosphorus 2.4 mg / tablet Sodium 33 mg / tablet.

Recently, I got Vitamin B12 sublingual liquid (for neuropathy) made by Sun Harvest at Sprouts Market. I don't see any sugar of any type in the ingredients, but it does taste quite sweet. It has Vitamin B12 as methylcobalamin at 1000 mcg. The other ingredients are: vegetable glycerin, deionized water, raspberry and berry natural flavors, and citric acid. I mixed that in his food yesterday, too.

Herbs and homeopathics as well as any detox supplements can call a healing crisis. That is where toxins are removed from the body rather quickly causing the symptoms of whatever "illness" the herbs/homeopathics were taken for to get worse for a short period of time. Not all herbs/homeopathics do this and not all animals/people experience it. Rehmannia has several different forms, many of them conducive to kidneys, and I'm currently using Rehmannia 6 but have used others. I've also used the Standard Process Feline Renal Support and I'm a strong believer in the SP supplements; I use many of them for the cats and for me. Some SP products can cause a healing crisis if they are detoxers .....like Cataplex C or GTF, for instance.
I've not had a cat have a healing crisis either from Rehmannia or Feline Renal Support.

I think most people in the LL use Zobaline for neuropathy as it is made for diabetic cats and there is no issue with any sugars. Lifelink Zobaline
 
Thank you, Marjorie and Sienne!

An important thing I have learned in the past couple of days from you and others are that cats don't drop drastically when you shoot through a Blue or Green. I've seen him drop 200 or more points in several hours from the 500s or 400s, and it's important to hear that he's not going to drop from 151 to 25 or from 67 to zero on the same dose I'd been giving him for several days. Before I read that information I was more comfortable dropping the dose to see what happens when I knew I could just raise it again if it didn't work out. To hear that Marjorie is more comfortable raising the dose and watching for hypos is enlightening. I'm sure you wouldn't suggest to someone brand new that that's a minor thing, but I have been dealing with this long enough, and I had one near-hypo that Carolyn helped me through. That gave me confidence in handling them.

I'm also glad to hear that a healing crisis has not happened to Marjorie's cats from Rehmannia or SP Renal Support. I should look into Solidago/Goldenrod to see if that's a possible issue with that herb.

Thanks for the information link on pancreatitis, Sienne.

I'll check his numbers and see about raising his dose. My husband has some calipers I can use to get the dose right. I'll have to find out how to know which syringe has good markings. I need to measure the drops or something like that, I think. Two seventy-five will be a lot of drops!!! I'll do a search on here and see if I can find that info, and if I can't I'll ask someone to help me.

Crossing my paws that Max doesn't bounce too high. Hope you all have a good night.
 
Dale

You're welcome. You're right that I wouldn't suggest to a newbie something that could potentially hypo their cat...but I shouldn't suggest that to anyone. The important part is to test frequently enough to control the numbers as they come back down.

I've been using digital calipers to dose; I've also used Relion, Walgreens, BD, Monojects, and now, Terumo, syringes. I think they are all equally inaccurate and that's where the calipers help to dose consistently. The one issue with the Monojects is they have a hub and sometimes the kitty can get varying amounts of insulin from the hub. If you are using calipers, you only need to count drops the first few times to figure out how many drops you get in .5u.
 
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