Almost a month into this - need some advice

KrisQ

KrisQ

Member
Hi Folks - it's been 28 days since I started testing and Kallie seems to be doing really well. She certainly feels better - drinking much less water, peeing a lot less, her coat looks great and she has more energy. It took a few weeks, but she and I have both settled into the testing routine. Her numbers look ok, I think, but could be better. 10 day average is 214 AMPS and 157 PMPS. I've not dosed her at night during these last ten days and only four times in the morning. Should I be happy with this progress and continue slowly or should I take a more aggressive approach and try to drop her into the Greens? I'll have a long weekend at home beginning Friday and intend to test several times per day to get her curve... Thoughts? And thank you!
 
I didn't use ProZinc and since I did my spreadsheets in Excel I can't make sense of published sheets. I have a background in math and I can tell you averages are useless in this case. For example my meter would take the last 3 PM readings of 180, 180 and then 282 and give an average of 214. Things change too quickly with a diabetic cat for that to be of any use.
I'm not being a smart ass, you are doing a great job and the last thing I need is to be labeled a pessimist who chases away new members. You should be very happy with your progress, it shows you care. ;)
 
Hi. I'm glad to hear that Kallie is feeling better. It is great that you are doing a pre-shot glucose test every time; however, without any mid-cycle tests, it is not really possible to know the impact of the doses you give. If you grab a test or two during any cycles when you can be around to do so, and if you vary the times you do it, you can begin to get enough data to get a picture of what is going on. Some people like to do a curve periodically which means testing every two hours from pre-shot to pre-shot. This lets you get an idea of when the insulin begins to take effect (onset) and when Kallie goes the lowest (nadir). That kind of data is VERY helpful when you are trying to make decisions on dosing. (Dickson is right, averages of your pre-shot test results are not really useful.) Ideally, you do not want to give just one shot a day. If you find that one pre-shot test result of the day is consistently high enough to give insulin but the other is not, the dose is probably not correct. It is better to give a lower does and to be able to give it consistently.

I see that the spreadsheet you are using is the one for human meters (has <50 for the lime green) but your signature says you are using the AlphaTrak2. So, please confirm that you are indeed using the AlphaTrak2. This matters because the numbers will be lower when a human meter is being used. Your numbers the last couple of days with no insulin look pretty good; however, they may still be a little bit high to just stop with all insulin. Personally, for Mia, I do not like to see 150+. I prefer to see between say 80 and 140. (I use an AlphaTrak2.) You really have to learn how low a pre-shot number you can safely give insulin on by trying things and monitoring. Having no mid-cycle data at all makes it hard to even attempt to guess at what the impact might be.

If you are prepared to monitor for a few days and to intervene (if Kallie starts going too low), if you get a 200+ pre-shot result, maybe you could try a dose of no more than .25u and hold it consistently for a few cycles UNLESS she goes too low on it. Hopefully, others will come along to give their thoughts as well.
 
Hi Kris! I'm glad to hear you've settled into a good testing routine and that Kallie is feeling better! Those physical signs are super important and we so often forget to look at them here. It's good to hear you're monitoring!

As to your spreadsheet, yes some mid cycle tests would be helpful. The reason for this is we dose here based on preshot AND nadir. So if you know that your cat is dropping into greens from a yellow preshot and then going back up to a yellow at next preshot, that tells us you're probably on a pretty good dose. If your cat is staying pretty flat a lot of times, that tells us the dose may need an increase. Basically, we want to know what your preshot was AND how far the dose you gave dropped her...as you collect that data, it becomes easier to guess what kind of reactions Kallie will have to different doses on different preshots. Make sense?

Getting mid cycles doesn't have to mean nadir (though we love when you can get that). It's actually great to get ANY tests...a lot of us get a +2 or +3 before bed every night so we can get an idea of what's going on there. Then some folks get an out the door test in the AM or a just walked in the door at PM...so like +2 or +10 maybe so they can still get mid cycles while working. Then on off days, they'll do a curve or get the middle parts of the cycle. Getting different times of day on different days can help us put together a good picture of what's going on.

My hunch is that Kallie isn't quite ready to go OTJ. You're still hitting yellows and high blues sometimes and usually OTJ cats will be pretty steadily below that...under 120 for a human meter, 140 or so for a pet meter. Can you explain what the DIFF column after PMPS is? I'm confused by that (sorry, I can be dense sometimes!).
 
Thanks for all of the responses. I am using an AlphaTrack BG meter - but I'm using the wrong spreadsheet? Can someone point me to the correct version?

The spreadsheet gibberish is me playing around with the numbers, tracking the difference between AM and PM BGL.
 
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