3/14/15 Queenie ~ PMPS 451, +2 338, +10 95 , +11.5 218, AMPS 278, +2 219

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Hi Chris. Your spreadsheet is fine as it is. Don't worry if PMPS is late in the day and the tests are done after midnight the next day as it is how many hours after the insulin dose that matters not the date. We are all in differing time zones in any case.
 
Voula said:
Hi Chris. Your spreadsheet is fine as it is. Don't worry if PMPS is late in the day and the tests are done after midnight the next day as it is how many hours after the insulin dose that matters not the date. We are all in differing time zones in any case.
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it's not the spread sheet it's the title to the post I'm wondering about. Is it necessary to include a date? and if so which date would I use?
 
Chris Armstrong said:
it's not the spread sheet it's the title to the post I'm wondering about. Is it necessary to include a date? and if so which date would I use?
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Hi Chris. Most people seem to put a date in the title of their posts and as for which date to use it would seem appropriate to put the date of the day when the PMPS was done. More experienced members might give a different opinion.
 
It is best to include a date so that people can tell which is your most recent post. Most of us start each new post with an AMPS but the way Voula suggested works too
 
Oh good grief!! Here I thought maybe there WAS a pattern beginning to build. Why would the number at +10 be 95 after free feeding and having numbrs in the 400's most of the day yesterday?? I am very confused. Would the fluids I gave last night at +1 be having this big of an impact so many hours later? I was shocked at this number and really need some advice quick.

Well, I guess I'm prone to anxiety! But the number climbed to 238 for the AMPS. So glad I did not put out a call for 911 :-) All help appreciated though. THat 95 was scary!
 
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She has been amazingly stable today and I am looking for a little handholding before I have to shoot in about 2 hours. I'm thinking that if the number is below 300 I should cut back on her dose. But I'm not sure.
 
Remind me - are you following the Tight Reg Protocol or Start Low Go Slow - or have you even been able to choose yet?

I would use the date for whenever you post - if you post at night, for example 3/15 Queenie pmps xx. If you post in the morning, do the same thing. Our day starts with the amps - in your case at noon-ish and goes through the end of the pmps cycle.
 
julie & punkin (ga) said:
Remind me - are you following the Tight Reg Protocol or Start Low Go Slow - or have you even been able to choose yet?

I would use the date for whenever you post - if you post at night, for example 3/15 Queenie pmps xx. If you post in the morning, do the same thing. Our day starts with the amps - in your case at noon-ish and goes through the end of the pmps cycle.
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Hi Julie,

I've not been able to decide yet. I've had another sick cat and a funeral this weekend. I think for the next few days going slow makes more sense for me in general.
 
Regarding your dose - we don't decrease the dose unless the cat's blood sugar drops below a certain threshold - for Start Low Go Slow, it's 90 on a human meter. ATs run higher than a human meter, but we don't have a "translation" of what that would be, so I can't tell you exactly.

If you're following Tight Reg, the threshold that causes a dose reduction is clearly stated as 68 on an AT.

In either case you would hold the dose until the cat's blood sugar drops below that threshold. Think of it as beginning to make progress - when you finally are getting control of the cat's blood sugar, you don't want to back away and decrease the dose too soon. If your goal is remission - and newly diagnosed cats who get their blood sugar under control fairly soon have an excellent chance of becoming diet-controlled - you want those higher numbers to come down.

Just saw your last post - you test more than enough for the TR protocol, if that makes a difference.

The way Lantus works is a bit counter-intuitive - it works best at low numbers. When you can shoot a lower number you can completely lower the range of the cat's blood sugar. It's pretty amazing. It doesn't do as good of a job at grabbing onto high numbers and bringing them down, but often when a person shoots a 100, the cat's blood sugar might only move 10 points over the next 12 hr cycle.

I'm so sorry for your loss - it sounds like you've had a difficult time. And now you have a diabetic cat to care for too.
 
julie & punkin (ga) said:
Regarding your dose - we don't decrease the dose unless the cat's blood sugar drops below a certain threshold - for Start Low Go Slow, it's 90 on a human meter. ATs run higher than a human meter, but we don't have a "translation" of what that would be, so I can't tell you exactly.

If you're following Tight Reg, the threshold that causes a dose reduction is clearly stated as 68 on an AT.

In either case you would hold the dose until the cat's blood sugar drops below that threshold. Think of it as beginning to make progress - when you finally are getting control of the cat's blood sugar, you don't want to back away and decrease the dose too soon. If your goal is remission - and newly diagnosed cats who get their blood sugar under control fairly soon have an excellent chance of becoming diet-controlled - you want those higher numbers to come down.

Just saw your last post - you test more than enough for the TR protocol, if that makes a difference.

The way Lantus works is a bit counter-intuitive - it works best at low numbers. When you can shoot a lower number you can completely lower the range of the cat's blood sugar. It's pretty amazing. It doesn't do as good of a job at grabbing onto high numbers and bringing them down, but often when a person shoots a 100, the cat's blood sugar might only move 10 points over the next 12 hr cycle.

I'm so sorry for your loss - it sounds like you've had a difficult time. And now you have a diabetic cat to care for too.
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Hi Julie,

I'm not really planning to keep going with such frequent testing. I am doing a curve for the vet today. But... I can keep testing this way ....especially if I might have a better chance of getting her diet controlled long term! that would be wonderful because she is really my mom's cat and mom wants her back (this is a long story and I don't think until she's controlled I'd be willing to give her back)

Your experienced insights are most helpful, thanks.

When you say "hold the dose" you mean not change the dose, correct?
 
Right, i'm responding to your comment:
Chris Armstrong said:
I'm thinking that if the number is below 300 I should cut back on her dose. But I'm not sure.
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When you're finally starting to see lower numbers, which you are, you don't want to stop your progress by reducing the dose in advance. You got green numbers with her last night - which is fantastic - so that's telling you that this dose can get her below 100.

The TR protocol study showed that cats that get into normal numbers (50-120 on a human glucometer, roughly 68-160ish on an AT) as quickly after diagnosis as possible have an excellent chance of having their pancreas heal and be able to become diet-controlled. We have no way to know which cats will do that, but in the study that produced the TR protocol, the rate was something like 85% for cats that get controlled in the first month. Following TR requires at least 3 tests per day - sometimes more - but even people who work full-time can follow it.

It's a lot more affordable to switch to a human glucometer. You can test about 4 times with a human glucometer for the cost of one test strip for the AT. People recover the cost of buying the human glucometer very quickly.

I think taking care of a diabetic cat would be somewhat close to impossible without someone to teach you the finer points of using Lantus or Levemir, like the people here on FDMB do.

You're a good daughter! Serryn's had her mom's cat, Purrdy, also trying to get him controlled for her mom.
 
julie & punkin (ga) said:
Right, i'm responding to your comment:


When you're finally starting to see lower numbers, which you are, you don't want to stop your progress by reducing the dose in advance. You got green numbers with her last night - which is fantastic - so that's telling you that this dose can get her below 100.

The TR protocol study showed that cats that get into normal numbers (50-120 on a human glucometer, roughly 68-160ish on an AT) as quickly after diagnosis as possible have an excellent chance of having their pancreas heal and be able to become diet-controlled. We have no way to know which cats will do that, but in the study that produced the TR protocol, the rate was something like 85% for cats that get controlled in the first month. Following TR requires at least 3 tests per day - sometimes more - but even people who work full-time can follow it.

It's a lot more affordable to switch to a human glucometer. You can test about 4 times with a human glucometer for the cost of one test strip for the AT. People recover the cost of buying the human glucometer very quickly.

I think taking care of a diabetic cat would be somewhat close to impossible without someone to teach you the finer points of using Lantus or Levemir, like the people here on FDMB do.

You're a good daughter! Serryn's had her mom's cat, Purrdy, also trying to get him controlled for her mom.
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Thanks Julie, It's just such a scary thing! that 95 freaked me out... and yes, I've gone through almost 50.00 worth of strips since Wednesday. This is my first time with a diabetic cat so I'm in totally new territory and really afraid of a Hypo episode. I work at home, so that's a bonus, but the distraction is pretty major and not alway easy.... my mom always accuses me of turning my patients into "science experiments".... but for me quality of life is always priority one and my mom is pretty good at denial :-)

BG just read 261 with about an hour to go.
 
Unless you really don't care about spending $$, then I'd encourage you to switch to a human glucometer. Many people buy the Relion ones from Walmart. You can get generic strips that work in them. It's not an area that I know a lot about - punkin passed away 1.5 years ago now and there are more recent meters and strips that people use. @Chris & China can hopefully give you the info on them. I bought strips through www.americandiabeteswholesale.com and that's about the cheapest you can get them. The deal I had was $65 for 250 strips - so you can see that's a huge savings compared to AT strips.

Another huge advantage to using a human glucometer is that our documents all give human glucometer numbers. It leaves us guessing as to what they translate into for AT meters.

Take a look at some other kitty's ss - for example, just in today's threads, we have updates from 2 OTJ kitties: Obie and Lolly, you can take a look at what kind of blood sugar tests a cat who is OTJ (off the juice/insulin) gets. Sometimes they are even as low as the 30's.

Tonka is on an OTJ trial right now and mostly seeing numbers under 100.

When a cat's body is held in normal numbers, two things happen. The pancreas has the opportunity to heal, if that's at all possible, and the longer that the cat is in normal numbers the more the body will remember that this is its normal range. As it spends more time in that range, the bouncing typically lessens and eventually stops.

We differentiate between low numbers with no symptoms and a symptomatic hypo. Punkin tested at 32 once and no symptoms - i gave him gravy from a can of high carb food and his blood sugar came up.
 
julie & punkin (ga) said:
Unless you really don't care about spending $$, then I'd encourage you to switch to a human glucometer. Many people buy the Relion ones from Walmart. You can get generic strips that work in them. It's not an area that I know a lot about - punkin passed away 1.5 years ago now and there are more recent meters and strips that people use. @Chris & China can hopefully give you the info on them. I bought strips through www.americandiabeteswholesale.com and that's about the cheapest you can get them. The deal I had was $65 for 250 strips - so you can see that's a huge savings compared to AT strips.

Another huge advantage to using a human glucometer is that our documents all give human glucometer numbers. It leaves us guessing as to what they translate into for AT meters.

Take a look at some other kitty's ss - for example, just in today's threads, we have updates from 2 OTJ kitties: Obie and Lolly, you can take a look at what kind of blood sugar tests a cat who is OTJ (off the juice/insulin) gets. Sometimes they are even as low as the 30's.

Tonka is on an OTJ trial right now and mostly seeing numbers under 100.

When a cat's body is held in normal numbers, two things happen. The pancreas has the opportunity to heal, if that's at all possible, and the longer that the cat is in normal numbers the more the body will remember that this is its normal range. As it spends more time in that range, the bouncing typically lessens and eventually stops.

We differentiate between low numbers with no symptoms and a symptomatic hypo. Punkin tested at 32 once and no symptoms - i gave him gravy from a can of high carb food and his blood sugar came up.
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Thanks so much for the hand holding Julie, it has been a real help! I added a note to my spread sheet to call attention the meter I am currently using. Looking at the other spread sheets helped a lot too. No wonder everyone thinks my sheet is a mess~~

I'll look into a human meter this week. I have found it very interesting that Queenie's symptoms (thirst especially) is so noticeable when her numbers are high. Just a little bit ago she got into a spat with another kitty and her face got scratched. When I went to do her test I realized she had a little blood on her face. Oh! I thought, no need to poke her ear. The reading was over 600! Then I thought, she has no symptoms, she's pretty sedate....so I lanced her ear and sure enough the reading was 261....hahaha, joke was on me I guess.

I also think that the prescription dry DM raises her BG quickly and stopped feeding it a few days ago. I'd like to get her off the prescription food all together. but I had thought that giving it as a small snack right before her 2 hour fast would be a safe way for me to keep her numbers high enough to feel comfortable giving her the full 2 units. Without a "buddy " to look over my shoulder I have to admit I really don't want the numbers to get below 200...I am just feeling like I don't know enough to deal with those lower numbers yet.... Naive I know.

Just got a 361 reading and did 2 units. I got scared at 10+ and gave a very small portion of Dry DM because I was worried about the number being below 200. Everyone who goes through this needs a mentor to help avoid stupid mistakes!!
 
By the way, Punkin looked like a real gem! I have a long haired yellow tabby, actually I had two until this past summer. These guys have been some of the best of the tribe! I am sorry you lost him but so grateful for the lessons he taught you right now...
 
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