Morpheus Gave Me a Scare (Lower Blood Sugar)

[Morpheus & Sam]

I was writing this in the comments section of my boy's spreadsheet, but it's getting really, really long, so I decided to post it here, instead. Mostly because we're testing him about every 15 minutes, right now, just to see if he's responding to the honey and food we're giving him. I don't think he's dangerously low, but he dropped pretty quickly so we're just making sure he doesn't keep going down.

Yesterday, 6/14/2019, at 6:55 p.m. CST, PMPS, his blood sugar was 382. I fed him a low carb meal at 80 calories/9% carbs (and my mistake may have been here: 30 minutes after he finished eating, his glucose level had dropped to 368) and I gave him his normal 3 units of Vetsulin.

I checked his blood sugar an hour later and it had gone up to 420, as it usually does get higher after a meal, and I checked it again an hour later. Then, +2 I got 160, which seemed like a very sharp drop. Then, at +3 I got a 71, at which point I got very concerned, so I asked my husband to redo the test. He got a 60. So we put honey on both sides of Morphie's gums. Within a few minutes he seemed to perk up a little bit and went to his water bowl and drank some water. We waited fifteen minutes and tested him again and got a reading of 56 mg/dL. More honey on each side of the boy's mouth and I gave him some finely mashed food that has a bit more of a carb content than his other food. We tested him again about 30 minutes later and he's come up to 59 mg/dL.

Object lesson for me here. Definitely need to NOT give him 3 units anymore. He dropped way too fast on that one. I'm really glad I was watching him so closely. I'm still going to be checking him every little while. I'm sure he's going to be annoyed with me, though he's really, really good about the testing process.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

I’m sorry no one got back to you earlier. You did a great job keeping Morpheus safe.
Next time give him some high carb food first to see if that does the job in getting the BSL up a bit. If not use the honey. If it is 50 or under I’d use honey with a teaspoon of high carb food.
Well done.
Yes you need to reduce. I don’t use Vetsulin do can’t really advise. I’ll tag @Djamila for you. If she doesn’t answer by AMPS I would reduce to 2.5 units as I see you have been going up in 1 unit increments. We advise going up and down in 1/4 unit increments. Make sure you test during the cycle to see how low the new dose takes your kitty

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

@Morpheus & Sam I see you are up to +11 and Morpheus is 168. If he is under 200 at AMPS I would stall, don’t feed and ask for help.. test again 20 minutes later to see if he is rising up.

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

I’m sorry no one got back to you earlier. You did a great job keeping Morpheus safe.
Next time give him some high carb food first to see if that does the job in getting the BSL up a bit. If not use the honey. If it is 50 or under I’d use honey with a teaspoon of high carb food.
Well done.
Yes you need to reduce. I don’t use Vetsulin do can’t really advise. I’ll tag @Djamila for you. If she doesn’t answer by AMPS I would reduce to 2.5 units as I see you have been going up in 1 unit increments. We advise going up and down in 1/4 unit increments. Make sure you test during the cycle to see how low the new dose takes your kitty

Thank you so much for this, especially for the part about our keeping him safe. That was so good to hear.

Our vet had originally given him 4 units once a day and, after our own research, we'd reduced by 1/2 unit increments to 2 units twice a day and she suggested 3 units twice a day. But now he's mostly over his UTI and I think his blood sugar may be responding better to the Vetsulin. His last test was 168 mg/dL at 5:18 a.m. CST -- 9 hours after his insulin, the lows, and getting him back up to where we weren't in panic mode. It looks a little different on his spreadsheet because we tested pretty close together, but hopefully I still did it right.

Also thank you for passing this along to @Djamila for me. I really appreciate the help.

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

I was going to ask about that. It's something I did yesterday... several times. He had really nice blood glucose readings under 200 for most of the day. I tested him every couple of hours and he was pretty steady. I've been feeding him small meals, just breaking up the 3 ounce cans of Fancy Feast into mini-meals, and it seems to help his stress... he's always been a grazer. Maybe that helps? Or maybe just the UTI being better, and the pain from his bones.

 

[Bron and Sheba (GA)]

4 units is a lot of insulin especially a newly diagnosed cat. I am really glad you are testing the blood sugars and have a SS.
Insulin needs to be given twice a day to cats.
He needs a good feed before his insulin and giving him small meals throughout the day and night is great.
With the SS if you did a couple of tests each hour you would put those numbers in the same box eg +6 box. You could say 60@+6
56@+6.5
For example. Does that make sense? Then when you get to +11 you are actually at +11 and it’s not already filled in with s number from say +7
If you’d feel happier reducing to 2 units in the morning if @Djamila hasnt responded, I would be happy about that.

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

4 units is a lot of insulin especially a newly diagnosed cat. I am really glad you are testing the blood sugars and have a SS.
Insulin needs to be given twice a day to cats.
He needs a good feed before his insulin and giving him small meals throughout the day and night is great.
With the SS if you did a couple of tests each hour you would put those numbers in the same box eg +6 box. You could say 60@+6
56@+6.5
For example. Does that make sense? Then when you get to +11 you are actually at +11 and it’s not already filled in with s number from say +7
If you’d feel happier reducing to 2 units in the morning if @Djamila hasnt responded, I would be happy about that.

I think we were very, very lucky that he weighed 18.8 pounds when he was first diagnosed. She prescribed the 4 units and we didn't know to test. We were a disaster waiting to happen.

As for food, I was so worried. For a while there he didn't want to eat at all; my big boy looked gaunt. I tried everything I had and he'd only eat maybe a Tablespoon of things he used to enjoy. That's the reason I first started feeding him smaller meals. Then, as he started to feel better, he started eating a little more.

Oh, okay, I did try that, but the color of the boxes changed to black and I thought I'd made a massive error in the SS. (Or the SS thought his blood glucose was 6056 and was like, um... sorry to inform you, but, that's REALLY bad...)

2 units sounds really good, actually. I'm getting ready to test him again, so, paws crossed.

 

[CandyH & Catcat]

when vetsulin kicks in like that and drops the BG precipitously, it is SCARY!

so glad you'd been reading up on it, did the right things, he's recovering, you're recovering too

been there, done that, using the t shirt for a rag ...

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

when vetsulin kicks in like that and drops the BG precipitously, it is SCARY!

so glad you'd been reading up on it, did the right things, he's recovering, you're recovering too

been there, done that, using the t shirt for a rag ...

That may be an understatement! My heart is still pounding. Especially since the honey didn't seem to be working, at first, and his blood sugar kept dropping! Whew. I'm so glad his numbers are back up and he's doing okay again. I can't even express how grateful I am for this forum.

 

[Djamila]

Hi there. I've never used Vetsulin either. I went Prozinc/Lantus/Levemir/Prozinc and skipped this one. @JanetNJ used it for a long time though. She might be able to help with this one

 

[Tomlin]

Hi. We just switched from Vetsulin & we had a similar experience with it. I made sure he ate before the insulin & then again soon after & still worried. It wasn't ideal for my guy because he grazes with his chronic pancreatitis. Eating large quantities doesn't work for him & with the drops & also lack of duration we made the call & ended up switching to Lantus last week.

 

[JanetNJ]

3 was way too much. In the future if you feel you need to raise the dose do it in increments of 0.25 units.

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

Hi there. I've never used Vetsulin either. I went Prozinc/Lantus/Levemir/Prozinc and skipped this one. @JanetNJ used it for a long time though. She might be able to help with this one

Thanks! We went down to 2 units and we're wondering if this is the insulin for Morpheus. We had another scare tonight.

(Sorry for the slow response time. I missed everything from Saturday on down.)

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

Hi. We just switched from Vetsulin & we had a similar experience with it. I made sure he ate before the insulin & then again soon after & still worried. It wasn't ideal for my guy because he grazes with his chronic pancreatitis. Eating large quantities doesn't work for him & with the drops & also lack of duration we made the call & ended up switching to Lantus last week.

I wonder if this is our problem? We had another scare tonight. From PMPS 339 mg/dL we gave him 2 units of Vetsulin and then when we checked his blood sugar next... okay, for some reason I can't do the math tonight.. I know these numbers are correct, and they're on the SS correctly, but my time math is off somehow. He dropped from that initial 339 to 179 in two hours and then from 179 to 55 in another two hours. He's back up, now, but he'll be over 300 by the time his shot is due. So the Vetsulin is just a poor choice in my know-less-than-nothing opinion.

Another thing is that he was a grazer as well, and, now, I can't get him to eat much of anything. I'll give him two or three options before he settles down to one thing, and even then he won't eat more than a 1/4 of a can or so. That right there could be the problem. I've bought cases of food off Amazon to try to tempt him, but he's really finicky.

(Sorry this took so long for me to answer, I completely missed it. I was relying on email to update me, but apparently gmail hates me. Thank you so much for replying.)

 

[Morpheus & Sam]

3 was way too much. In the future if you feel you need to raise the dose do it in increments of 0.25 units.

I completely agree. The vet initially put us on 4 units and we reduced him to between 1.5 and 2 units, depending on his blood sugar, because we'd read the Vetsulin site and here and everything we could get our hands on. Our vet upped it to 3 units at our last visit. Then we had that Hypo and... we were lucky to have found this place. I seriously could have hurt my boy.

Edited to correct spelling.

 

[Tomlin]

I wonder if this is our problem? We had another scare tonight. From PMPS 339 mg/dL we gave him 2 units of Vetsulin and then when we checked his blood sugar next... okay, for some reason I can't do the math tonight.. I know these numbers are correct, and they're on the SS correctly, but my time math is off somehow. He dropped from that initial 339 to 179 in two hours and then from 179 to 55 in another two hours. He's back up, now, but he'll be over 300 by the time his shot is due. So the Vetsulin is just a poor choice in my know-less-than-nothing opinion.

Another thing is that he was a grazer as well, and, now, I can't get him to eat much of anything. I'll give him two or three options before he settles down to one thing, and even then he won't eat more than a 1/4 of a can or so. That right there could be the problem. I've bought cases of food off Amazon to try to tempt him, but he's really finicky.

(Sorry this took so long for me to answer, I completely missed it. I was relying on email to update me, but apparently gmail hates me. Thank you so much for replying.)

NO worries about the late reply ! My T did NOT look good on the Vetsulin. It just did not keep him in a consistent place. He's doing so much better on the Lantus even though its only Day 6. He's not seeing any low #s but thats ok....slow & steady vs up, down, up, down! Just as one example, on Vetsulin, he went from 256 to 74 within 2 hours & then its seemed like the #s just rose until the 6+ point & then he was back where he started. Now I feel like we are slowly starting to keep things stable. My hope is with the next increase in dose of Lantus, we see a nice smooth lowering of #s again & just continue to step down from there. The other big issue for me with Vetsulin was my guy has pancreatitis, which flared this weekend for the first time in almost 4 years. When that happens he doesn't eat as much & that would have been a serious issue with the Vetsulin if he wouldn't eat enough pre & post shot to try to protect him from very low #s.