Tammi
Member Since 2017
I’ll TRY to make a long story as short as possible (I was unsuccessful LOL). My 8 y.o boy Luigi (yes, he had a brother Mario who passed away when he was 2 1/2) was dx a year ago. Previous diet consisted of high quality canned food in AM and PM and small amount of high quality kibble for lunch and bedtime snack. His highest weight was 24lbs (yes, he was a BIG guy) I took him to the vet (a new one for us) because he was leaking urine, puddle while he was sleeping. dr did a blood a test and called a couple days later saying he was diabetic. Ok, a shock as I had no idea what I was in for, but research until we took him in the next day made me realize it won’t be so bad. His weight was also 18lbs at this time. His numbers were in the 500s at the vet so we started on 4 units of Vetsulin 2x a day and I started giving him chicken soup for the soul canned cat food (dr recommended high fiber food, and that has 3% fiber..highest I had found for canned). Because he was always ravenous, I still fed him the kibble for lunch and bedtime (a lower carb brand, i don’t remember what it was) I don’t think it too long before he stopped leaking urine (and I was able to finally get the smell out of my house!) 3 weeks after we started he had a major hypo episode (that’s what I call them, episodes)…I had no idea that’s what it was so I rushed him to the vet, he gave him some pouch frosting, and I left him for a few hours while I went to class. We lowered his dose to 3U 2x a day, was good for about a week before he started having episodes almost every day, about 3-4 hours after his morning shot. It wasn’t until then that I started testing on my own and his numbers were consistently perfect. Then, I did what I know no good pet parent should do. Without the Dr’s advice, I stopped the insulin altogether. I did not continue checking his BG but he was FINE and showing NO symptoms until about 6 weeks ago he started leaking urine again. I had been giving him different food as he had stopped eating the Chicken Soup food and I wasn’t being as picky and not buying grain free, so who knows how many carbs it had. I switched back to a low carb diet (i found instinct canned food, while a LOT more expensive) is also 3% fiber hoping that would help, but no. I could tell he was losing a LOT of weight as petting him it was just bones…noticed he was drinking a lot more and his leaking puddles getting bigger, so back to the vet and back to the vetsulin…and his weight was 11.2lbs!!!!! Due to his many episodes before, we started at 2U 2x a day. His numbers were high, 400’s, and the dose didn’t seem to help too much so, due to all my knowledge I gained last year, I played with the dosing myself, put him back to 4, numbers were still high…read TOO much insulin can cause high numbers as well, knocked him to 3, leaking stopped almost immediately and numbers were looking good. This past Thursday, the night before his 3 week follow up he had an episode. I tested his BG and it registered as LO…my meter reads between 20-500, so I gave him his bedtime canned food and a little bit of kibble and he was up and running in no time. Since I was JUST about to crawl into bed when this happened, I didn’t get another BG after, but since he was acting fine and my son was downstairs with him, I wasn’t worried. The next morning, before breakfast he was 323, 30 mins later, before shot, he was 366, and a little over an hour after that, at the vet, he was 280. So, we stayed on 2U but his numbers are just boggling me. I’ll post them in a reply so as not to make this intro look so cluttered LOL. Oh, and in 3 weeks time he gained .6lbs....last 2 days numbers in following reply
