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serenityflyer

serenityflyer

Member Since 2016
image.jpeg Just wanted to say hello. My Guster was diagnosed yesterday. We had just noticed a change in her drinking habits in the past month. Needless to say we're a bit new to all of this. Very glad to have my vet refer us to this site. I've been poking around since she left (our vet makes house calls). So thank you and hello. I anticipate spending a lot of time here looking for information and support.
 
Hello, and kudos to your vet for referring you here. That is rare. Please continue to look through the site and ask any questions you have.

Can you tell us about you and your kitty? Does your vet recommend home testing?

Paula
 
Welcome to the message board, the best place you never wanted to be.

There are 4 things you'll need to manage your kitty's diabetes:
- You - without your commitment, the following won't work.
- Home blood glucose monitoring with an inexpensive human glucometer such as the WalMart Relion Confirm or Target Up and Up (the pet ones will break your budget!). This saves you the cost of going to the vet for curves and done regularly, removes the need for a fructosamine test. All of our insulin guidelines use human glucometer numbers for reference.
- Low carb over the counter canned or raw diet, such as many Friskies pates. See Cat Info for more info. If already on insulin, you must be home testing before changing the diet. Food changes should be gradual to avoid GI upsets - 20-25% different food each day until switched. There are 2 low carb, dry, over the counter foods in the US - Evo Cat and Kitten dry found at pet specialty stores and Young Again 0 found online.
- A long-lasting insulin such as ProZinc, Lantus, BCP PZI, or Levemir. No insulin lasts 24 hours in the cat, so giving it every 12 hours is optimal for control.
 
My vet said I could do home testing but didn't say I "had" to. She quoted $70 dollars for the glucometer. I know that they're cheaper at Target but wasn't sure about the differences because until yesterday I didn't even know that they made a glucometer for pets. I've saved both the regular spreadsheet and the one for pet meters on google drive for when I do start home testing though. I figure by the end of the week I should have one since they haven't given me insulin yet. I actually need to call the vet tomorrow to set up her next appointment to get that.

I've had Gus since she was a kitten, she'll be seven this year. She's a bit nervous/unhappy around new people but is an absolute cuddle bug and very tolerant of me when I clip her nails or check her ears. I'm sure she won't be happy when I start sticking her with needles twice a day, but we'll work through it together. Luckily she loves wet food so I don't foresee any resistance on that front. And we've been giving her a more structured diet (1/4 cup dry food 3x a day with approx 1.3oz of wet food every other day) for a while so structured mealtimes shouldn't be a huge challenge for her either. We may still invest in an automatic feeder for her to give her a little more stability in timing.

I actually started immunotherapy allergy shots about a year ago after determining that I'm actually quite allergic to cats (among other things). I couldn't bear to think of giving up on her then and I can't imagine it now. She's my fur baby. My biggest fear at this point is if we go on vacation or something how she'll get her shots. Our neighbors (also cat parents) who usually check in on her when we're away actually surprised me today and said they'd come over to learn how to care for her when we're gone. And thankfully we use the same vet so I'm hopeful at this point. Just gotta take it all one challenge at a time.
 
serenityflyer said:
My vet said I could do home testing but didn't say I "had" to.
Click to expand...

This is what mine said as well. She also told me to give him 4 units of Vetsulin and if I had kept shooting blindly (without home-testing) it was a matter of time before Carter would have gone hypo. It's really a shame that they don't stress the importance of home testing, but even m0re of a shame when some vet's tell you not to all together.
 
For meters, look for one that takes .3 size blood drop. That is the smallest blood drop meters out there. Also look at price of test strips. That is what you will be buying the most.

Wal-Mart relion confirm and micro meters are very popular here. Definitely under $70 dollars. You can order strips on line or buy in the store. On line is usually cheaper though.

You will need a box of lancets, as long as you aren't using the lancing device you can buy any brand.
 
We got a ReliOn Confirm tonight and misread the packaging for the starter kit so actually have no strips right now. I guess I know where I'm going for lunch tomorrow. We're also trying to sort out her food situation. We have her on Purina Beyond right now, the dry kibble. I've seen that the wet food is better and we have a new box of (probably not great) Wiskas seafood something or other [It really depended on what we could find at the store when she runs low since this was her wet food "treat" every other night. Let's be fair - until now I've tried to make "better" choices for her but I haven't read this much about cat food ever in my life]. I haven't found a firm verdict on "grain free" dry options like the Beyond stuff, but I am getting the gist that the lower the carbs the better and if the calculator I found (somewhere on here.. sorry can't remember exactly where) is to be believed the Purina Beyond we have is somewhere around 34% carbs versus the 7-11% that were were finding in the wet foods (Friskies pates, Sheba pates). We are getting low-er on her dry food now anyway so it's actually not the worst time ever to be transitioning food for her. We'd be shopping for dry food for her by the end of next week at the very latest. I'm just not sure how much to change for her and how fast. The doctor did recommend going to wet food. I just don't know if I should wait until she gets her insulin and then switch, or if I should move her to wet food now, or if we should keep doing what we're doing and start insulin and then move to wet food later. I'm guessing that for us it's going to be a confluence of events and kinda a hodgepodge of food for a while until we sort out what she'll eat (we got a few sample cans of the Friskies and the Sheba cans to see what she'll eat. She typically won't touch chicken, turkey, beef). I just don't want to be less helpful to her by trying to do too much too fast.

Also, thanks so much to everyone for the feedback so far. I keep checking in and texting my boyfriend (her other caretaker here) with new information. Between this and the fact that the vet lets me email with any questions I am feeling much less overwhelmed by all this.
 
If your kitty isn't on insulin yet, now is a good time to switch to a low carb, wet food. Learn to test her BG, so that if she still needs insulin (the change in food can lower BG's significantly) you'll be ready.
 
Hello and welcome. Your vet recommended you to this site? That is awesome. I think you may have some pull to guide your vet if she knows about this site. The difference in points between the human meter and the vet doing a glucose test is 10-20 points. my relion prime was like 12 points diff but close enough my vets said it was fine to use. The alpha pet meter will be expensive compared to the human one cost wise.
If you go to walmart they have buy five get five sheba perfect portions free until the april 21 you have to print it from there site or u can use the sheba site coupons
http://www.sheba.com/Home
walmart coupon about 15th item down
target- http://www.target.com/bp/sheba
Food plays an important part. Switch to the wet food like Sharon said and try to eliminate the dry now before the insulin even starts. Also your vet is probably going to prescribe vetinsulin and you don't want that try to get lantus or one of the other kinds of insulin listed on this forum. I wasted 90.00 on vetinsulin and syringes from the vet because I didnt know about this site. I spent two weeks on vetinsulin and my cat didnt do well on it. I got lantus and things are so much better. Your vet is may say lantus? To expensive or we don't carry it. Well its human insulin and you can order it from here with a prescription for a lot cheaper
rxcanada4less.com/index.html
you can also buy syringes at most pharmacy or online for a lot cheaper some states do require a prescription.
When you start reading the diet info on this forum you won't need the expensive foods.
Try to read as much as you can and ask us questions so you don't end up wasting any money like I did with my vet.
 
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serenityflyer said:
I actually started immunotherapy allergy shots about a year ago after determining that I'm actually quite allergic to cats (among other things). I couldn't bear to think of giving up on her then and I can't imagine it now. She's my fur baby. [...] Our neighbors (also cat parents) who usually check in on her when we're away actually surprised me today and said they'd come over to learn how to care for her when we're gone.
Click to expand...
Huge props - to all of you! :bighug: Your neighbours are golden. :)


Mogs
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scoobydoox said:
The difference in points between the human meter and the vet doing a glucose test is 10-20 points. my relion prime was like 12 points diff but close enough my vets said it was fine to use.
Click to expand...

She actually has her follow-up appointment tomorrow so I was hoping to take that opportunity to "sync" the meter I got to theirs. I actually wanted to get a feel for testing her before she got too spooked so I did a test test tonight. She took me pricking her ear quite well. Didn't whine or growl or anything. She let me mess with it as much as I needed to get enough blood for the sample and then still let me hold her afterward (I'm actually kinda proud that she did as well as she did). I was sure she'd at least yelp like she does when we step too close to her tail.

Now her number about two hours after giving her food tonight was 292. Which is high, but not what the vet was getting on Saturday. She got 600+ (on a pet meter, sure but that is not a 12 point difference) but Gus was under a tremendous amount of stress (have I mentioned she doesn't like new people touching her?). Either way I'm super thankful that I got the meter to do home testing now. Since my dad got diabetes a few years ago it's been a huge stress for me to have the doctor blindly dictating insulin levels for him based on tests after he drove home to the doctor (he had been working and living out of state for several years and would travel several hours home on weekends to see his doctor). I know what it means to have the crazy circumstances of a doctor visit dictate a higher insulin dose than needed. I'm definitely keeping track of her glucose levels when we start this.

I'm spending the rest of the night compiling a list of questions to ask the vet. I'll have to see what they're recommending for insulin. She did say $90-ish dollars for a vial of insulin, but she didn't say a brand so I'll have to explore my options.
 
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