I woke up to a cat with a 507 glucose and you were all worried he'd plummet to dangerous levels.
Then you were lucky. There was zero guarantee of that happening.
Somehow I wasn't afraid of that happening or else I wouldn't have done what I did
And there is the problem - you SHOULD be scared that his numbers could drop. Hypo is not something you play with or ignore the possibility of. We've all had nights where we got little to no sleep and that was with our cats on consistent doses where we knew where the numbers would be likely to go. And that, if you want Poopers regulated and in good numbers, is something you're going to have to deal with too. You can't just decide that you think he's OK because you're tired and leave him alone for the night.
My cat isn't like your guy's cats or any example of your cats.
He's a cat, he's subject to the rules of biology just like every other living creature. At the rate you're going, you'll never know whether or not there's a dose he does respond to because you'll never let him have any dose long enough to find out. On this site there are low dose cats, high dose cats, cats that go into remission, cats that do well for years on the same dose, cats that need dose adjustments now and then for years. The one thing most of these cats have in common is that their owners treat their diabetes consistently and within safety guidelines. Not you - you seem to think you know better than the whole veterinary profession and everyone who's been through this before.
So the higher dose is probably what he needs as the low dose doesn't do much to budge him.
Not in one shot it won't - not with Lantus. We've all explained this over and over and it will never work the way you seem to expect it to. You're treating it as though it's one of the fast acting in and out human insulins and it just isn't - you're never going to get the results you want this way.
He is very stubborn and has a stubborn body.
No, he's not. He's a cat. He's not doing this to spite you or anyone else. He's just not getting the chance for his body to learn to deal with a consistent dose of insulin.
Anyways, I am staying with the 5.5 units for over a week to see what it does then with the new shipment of cat food I'm getting. I won't go up from the 5.5 units.
I sincerely hope you mean it this time for Poopers sake. But you've said this before and gone ahead and changed the dose anyway after 2 or 3 cycles when you don't see the numbers you want to see and I expect nothing different from you this time around. To be honest, I'm pretty much done caring what you think (and it takes a long time and a lot of someone else's refusal to listen to anything anyone else says to make me that way about anything) - we've all tried and tried and you don't want to hear what we have to say. I have been trying to help you for many weeks and you don't want to listen. Even this morning I'm getting the impression of "look guys, I was right" and you could easily not have been. This condition is NOT a game.
May or may not be rebound. I am not convinced it is rebound
Might be, might well not be - remember he ended up with an unshootable number last night after the way he dosed yesterday. So it could be rebound, a bounce from the 190 of the effects of a skipped shot especially when the cat has no solid depot to work on when a shot is skipped.
If you look at the spreadsheet and zoom out, his numbers started going up as you started increasing the dose from about 1 unit or so.
Yes, and he even had better numbers than he's getting now when he got no insulin for about a week. FWIW I'm wondering if at this point, as well as the fact that Poopers clearly didn't need a particularly high dose to begin with, we're looking at insulin resistance and/or glucose toxicity from the way the dosing's been played about with - increased, decreased, stopped and started altogether when it probably didn't need to be early on. In which case, consistency and working up the doses gradually to find the one that breaks that is going to be even more important because when he hits a breakthrough and starts to come back down it's going to be fast.
BJM, that was because I was on a completely different insulin and he may have not been fully diabetic then.
If he was on insulin then he was "fully diabetic" whatever you think that means at that point. And even before you switched insulins for the first time you were losing control of the numbers - AFTER increasing the dose. BJM is right - his numbers were better on a lower dose.
I'm not an idiot and I know his dosing yesterday was vastly close to each other. However, he got a total of 6.5 units of insulin which is not much more than the 5 units he was getting for several days before. So I can see potential problems if I was giving him like 3 units for several weeks and then suddenly see he isn't doing better so I go from 3 units to like 6 units all of a sudden. However, he was on 5 units for a while. My problem is I may need new insulin and a fresh batch of it. These pens were prescribed back in Aug and despite me keeping them in the refrigerator since I received them they may have lost their potency during the time spent unrefrigerated. I don't know but while this does work its not sticking around. I was suggested to try either Levemir or PZI. Those are 2 insulins that I have not tried yet. I did try to BCP PZI insulin but it kept his numbers in the 300s all the time with the 3-4 units he was on. Trust me, do you honestly think I am clueless and want to hurt my boy? Do you think I want to jump around from dose to dose because I'm not an idiot and I know the harm that does to anyone using insulin. I'm just trying to find the right dosing for him and stick with it. As I can see from experimenting, the lower dose keeps his numbers up since he is starting high to begin with in the mornings. Yes, he was low once with the lower dosing but that was because he was on N and most of you said that is a cheap insulin and not good for cats. It did drop his numbers like a rocket but it only lasted 4-6 hours before wearing off and then he was without insulin until it was time for his next shot. I don't want him to be on that kind of insulin as I want to see him on something that lasts in his system all day until evening. I'm probably going to have to get a fresh batch of insulin but affordability wise I'm not sure what route to go and given that I sent out a message asking if anyone had any leftover pens and not getting any response I'll probably have to order it myself from somewhere. That is okay because I know not everyone can help out and I completely understand. My next step is whether or not to keep Lantus or go to PZI even though I'm worried about that not working due to the BCP insulin not working and that insulin is a cat insulin. Although at the time Pooper's had dental problems when he was taking the BCP insulin so not sure if since his mouth has cleared up if that insulin could work now if given a higher dosage from the 3 units he was getting on it?
Again, there's your problem. You don't understand what you're doing with Lantus and whether you want to believe it or not, that was a HUGE dose increase - plus the fur shot you think you gave in the morning which he might very well have got some of. Even cats that finish up being high dose (and we're talking 20 or more units twice a day) don't increase that fast at 5 units BECAUSE IT ISN'T SAFE. The Lantus is working - if it wasn't he wouldn't have got to 193. No, we know you don't want to hurt your boy, but you are in fact either clueless or unwilling to learn and listen to sense. If you're not going to dose consistently, safely and properly then it isn't going to matter a damn what insulin you use - it isn't going to do what you want it to do. And what exactly makes you think that jumping around from dose to dose is going to suddenly let you land on the 'magic' dose when that method doesn't work for anyone else? Because, please, if you have some miraculous answer to how to decide the perfect dose without any method at all, share it with the rest of the world and make everyone's lives easier. Oh, that's right you DON'T have that answer or Poopers would have been regulated from day one. Or in fact that you haven't hit the 'magic' dose already but were too impatient to see it work so moved on to something else before you saw results? You say you know it does damage but you're doing it anyway - what sort of reasoning is that? Especially when we've all told you that not only might it cause harm but it isn't going to help you get him regulated. We've heard a lot about what you want for Poopers and his numbers over the months, but wanting something without working with a method to make it happen doesn't do anything to get you to where you want. You're looking for the food that works, the insulin that works and then at the same time not keeping anything consistent enough for anything at all to work.
So yeah, this morning I for one am mad at you. Yesterday I wasn't, I was trying to help keep Poopers safe. But this morning when you're still refusing to listen and thinking you know better - yeah I'm mad. You know why I'm mad? Because Poopers is going to finish up paying the price for this and that MAKES me mad when if you'd just listen you could get all the help and support you'd need to keep him safe and instead you choose to go on taking risks with his safety and possibly his life.
