9-24 Olives PMPS 130. Decided to shoot. Lowest pre shot number thus far.

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OlivesMom

Member Since 2020
https://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB...eding-raw-have-questions.235797/#post-2642249

After staring at mostly black for the last 3 cycles Olive's finally showing some signs that MAYBE, just MAYBE she's going to start coming down. The purple gave me some hope. The bad news is she won't touch the new Toppers with a ten foot pole. Every time I offer she runs the other direction. All I can do is keep trying but in the meantime I'm going to have to stick to the old DM/Raw ratio. If she doesn't comply by eating the Toppers I'll have to change proteins altogether and get her on the duck. She's shown some promise in liking that protein, but I've got too many bags of the turkey and need to work those down first.

Can someone tell me if the following would be the proper thing to do? I'm trying to work on the timing of her food compared to the shot/+3 onset/Nadir to see if this will help her level out better. I'm thinking that I should feed her the normal DM/Raw ratio for her injection mealtimes, then continue this ratio every few hours until +6. From +6 I'll begin feeding her more raw than DM all the way up to her last meal at +10. My thoughts are to try and get the bulk of her carbs in from injection time to +6 and then lower the carbs until her next injection hoping this will cause her BG to stay lower longer until the next insulin dose. Does this sound like something you guys do to help your cats stay lower longer or am I off base in my thinking? I'd appreciate your feedback. Sometimes I tend to make simple things too complicated so I'd value your thoughts.

Right now it takes a solid 24 hours at her current food ratio to get an entire can of DM down her. I know she's supposed to get in this can during the daytime of 12 hours, but that's never going to happen so I have to feed all day and all night at little amounts in order to obtain the objective. I tried offering her more food so I could get 3 hours solid sleep, hoping she's eat more when I got up so I wouldn't have to feed as often, but she's simply not getting in the calories that way. Feeding every few hours seems to be her thing right now so I've got to stick with it to get some weight on her.
 
What about alternating the duck with the turkey throughout the day?

My crew won't eat same thing two days in a row. Today Trip is eating savory centers and freeze dried turkey. Won't touch the duck she ate yesterday. Tux will only eat beef pate today. Wouldn't touch it yesterday. PJ only wants freeze dried today, yesterday she only ate chicken pate. I have 5 different things open this morning, through out the day some one will eat one of them. Nothing new here always have 5-6 cans open, eventually it gets eaten.
 
Olive & Paula said:
What about alternating the duck with the turkey throughout the day?
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That would work. I must say I'm very relieved to hear I'm not the only one with cats who change like Jekyll and Hide from one day to the next. Hubby thought I was crazy with so many food items opened at once when we still had our Sophie. He used to kid me and say I needed to create a picture menu so she could touch with her paw what she wanted for that day. lol.
Being that it's still raw food, would there be any tummy issues if I switched between proteins like that? I really like your idea.
Primal got back with me today and she spent her time walking me through the entire list of carbs and products. I must say I was a bit surprised when she said the Toppers didn't have the carbs I was told. She said it only contains 0.08% and not the 13% amount. If anyone would know for sure it would be the company who makes it, right? She did provide a lot of great information and I'm going to post it here so anyone who reads this in the future will know it too if they don't already.
Raw and Freeze Dried are exactly the same in carb/calorie content and EVERYTHING at Primal is based on 100Grams which is 3-4 nuggets. So if it lists the carb content as 0.04% for the Frozen Raw Turkey, that means there will be 0.04% carbs contained in those 3-4 nuggets combined.

Here's the listing for all the foods and their carb content:
Turkey 0.04%
Chicken & Salmon 0.5%
Beef & Salmon 2.4%
Pork 1.0%
Rabbit 2.0%
Venison 2.3%
Duck 2.8%

Market Mix Toppers Beef 1.7% Toppers too are based on 100 grams. 1 nugget is approximately 1 ounce/ 3-4 nuggets are approximately 100 grams
Market Mix Toppers Chicken 0.05%
Market Mix Toppers Turkey 0.08%

Edible Elixirs Green Smoothie is 4% and also based on 100 grams.

Bone broths are about the same and are just under 0.01 Carbs. She said that a cat really can't overdue it if they drink a lot of bone broth, but if you notice them peeing too much or missing the box because they are always so full from drinking it then to back off the amount.

There you have it, guys. I hope this helps someone down the line. I know it helped me to finally know for sure what my cats are eating. Well, I guess it really doesn't matter then if Olive will eat the toppers or not because it's not much in the way of carbs anyways. I think adding duck to the diet would be a great thing indeed.
 
One day to the next......I'd be lucky for that!!!!!. My crew changes from meal to meal, that's pretty much every 3 hrs.

Common sense, we humans always eat different foods (ok not my hubby) so why would cats only want just one food. I have some frozen, so I can give it again next week. My crew doesn't get tummy issues from changing. Since food changes so much, they don't get enough of one in one day to make it a problem. Maybe that's why they change it up, they are smart enough to know when to stay away if it makes them sick.
 
Help! Since Olive has been in the black for 3 cycles she's now 129 PMPS. Is it safe to shoot? I've only shot low once and she was 154 at that time. Because she's been so high and bouncy, should I wait a half hour and retest hoping for higher numbers or is it safe after all this to shoot now?
 
I waited a half hour and her numbers really hadn't gone up so decided to shoot. It's the lowest I've shot yet so I'm really nervous, but when I look back at the PM shot on the 20th when I shot 154, she stayed in the yellow. Maybe shooting a little lower will get her into the blue. I'll be monitoring closely through this night.
 
Hello there, maybe I'm tired..but I couldn't translate what half of 1 u means...sound like .5 ???

Or since you were giving 0.1 u it's half of that?? Is that a drop? I'm very confused...

At any rate it's good to see her in to the blues today...
 
Amazing! Congrats on shooting your lowest number ever. As the saying goes, "shoot low to stay low". So good for you!! :woot:

Looks like you did a great job monitoring when you shot the 154 on 9/20. :DYou want to take that exact same approach. Start by getting a +1 and +2, and let's see what the numbers are.

I am also a bit confused by your current dosing. You were dosing 0.01u BID, correct? That was what was on your spreadsheet. Are you now dosing 0.005U BID? I'm not sure how to read your current dose. It says "Relion Half IU".
 
I used to rotate 4 proteins, 1 per day. You may need to try just a bit of duck and work up the volume, just in case she has some transition issues. And you plan on serving the carbs before nadir is a good one.
OlivesMom said:
She said that a cat really can't overdue it if they drink a lot of bone broth
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Other than the fact that bone broth is full of phosphorus, so not good for a kidney disease cat.

Congrats on shooting that preshot! :cool: It's a bounce breaking cycle, so you might see a little action tonight. A +2 would be a good one.
 
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I thought my cat was the weirdo who wouldn't eat the same thing from one meal to the next! Yay! He's normal!
Good job with your kitty. You're learning tons in a short period of time! Well done.
 
Sam&Milo&Singha said:
You're learning tons in a short period of time! Well done
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Thank you. Appreciate it.
Wendy&Neko said:
Congrats on shooting that preshot! :cool: It's a bounce breaking cycle, so you might see a little action tonight. A +2 would be a good one.
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Olive is her lowest since the PM shot. She's 97 now. She was 111 an hour ago @+3, so it's making me a bit nervous since she has hours to go before the nadir. I'm simply not used to her BG this low without a problem arising later so I'm watching closely. I'm trying not to get into panic mode and although I plan to feed her frequently until the nadir, I'm trying to resist stepping in and intervening too soon with anything more than her normal LC food. Just because I am not comfortable seeing her BG low doesn't mean it's not okay for her to experience. It's just me, I know. I know it's said 50 is the take action number and in the past it's been 100 for Olive as she has dipped 50 points in a heartbeat, but I'm trying to chill, watch, test, feed, and stay calm through the process. I thought shooting at 154 was scary...this definitely beat that. But I remembered what you guys said about shooting low to stay low and I just had to take another leap of faith.
Wendy&Neko said:
I used to rotate 4 proteins, 1 per day. You may need to try just a bit of duck and work up the volume, just in case she has some transition issues. And you plan on serving the carbs before nadir is a good one.
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Oh good, I'm so glad to hear my ideas of serving carbs up to the nadir is a good one. I'll also try and work her up on the duck too.
Butters & Lyla said:
Amazing! Congrats on shooting your lowest number ever. As the saying goes, "shoot low to stay low". So good for you!!
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Really appreciate it, thanks!;)
Butters & Lyla said:
I am also a bit confused by your current dosing. You were dosing 0.01u BID, correct? That was what was on your spreadsheet. Are you now dosing 0.005U BID? I'm not sure how to read your current dose. It says "Relion Half IU".
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Sue and Luci said:
Or since you were giving 0.1 u it's half of that?? Is that a drop? I'm very confused...
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Yeah, I know it's confusing. What happened was the syringe brand we'd been using from the start was faultily stamped and we ended up giving her different amounts of insulin each time because of it. At around this time we were told that she was getting too much insulin and to reduce by a quarter unit (0.25) and when that seemed like too much we went down to the lowest suggested which was 0.01. We were guessing where the dose was and hoping we got it right. But those stamped lines on the syringes were a real problem. So we got a caliper and set it for the 0.01 dose of insulin. We tested it too many times to count and always got the same digital reading. I knew it looked like a lot for just a drop (0.01) but the stamped zero lines as well as the half unit line was always off so we just thought the caliper was the only thing we could trust. Until I got fed up with those brand syringes and bought some Relions once the old box was almost gone. I tested 20 of those new Relion syringes until I got an average and then bought a second caliper to use on them so we wouldn't have to reset what we "thought" was the 0.01 on the other one. Imagine our surprise when the new caliper was reading a much different number. We learned all this time we thought she was getting 0.01 she was in fact getting almost half a unit 0.5 Once we knew this for a fact I went and tested a bunch of the old brand syringes and discovered just how inaccurate the dosing had been as we always lined up the top of the caliper arm with the bottom of the "hat" of the syringe as I call it and we learned that was as faulty as could be. So sometimes she would get only a fraction of the insulin she was supposed to. No wonder her BG was all over the map. So with the Relions and the new caliper, we are pretty much dead on half a unit compared to the other syringe, so that's what we're marking the dose as from here on out. I just didn't want to tinker with correcting all the 0.01 on the SS yet. Hope this clarifies things for you guys. So in reality she's always gotten a half unit 0.5 when we believed she was only getting 0.01. It was our stupidity for not catching it but we were so knew to this and had faulty syringes on top of it. We simply didn't realize the mistake.

Just tested Olive +4.5 and she's not dropping quite as fast since +2. She was 97+4 and 93+4.5. I'll test again at +5 and see where it is then. If she dips only a little and stays steady without anything too dramatic I might take a nap for an hour, but I don't think I'll truly rest until she's safely at the nadir with a still decent number.
 
Olive is looking great. She’s not dropping too quickly but giving you a lovely cycle. I see you are feeding her each time you test. That’s ok but don’t feed too much in case you need her to eat a bit later. We don’t want her to be too full.
Well done!
 
Bron and Sheba (GA) said:
Olive is looking great. She’s not dropping too quickly but giving you a lovely cycle. I see you are feeding her each time you test. That’s ok but don’t feed too much in case you need her to eat a bit later. We don’t want her to be too full.
Well done!
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Thank you. She's 87+5 now. At least she's not dropping too quickly. The fact she's a grazer is working to my advantage here. She'd be totally fine if I fed her a tsp every hour on the hour. I'm just trying to get calories into her so she'll put on some weight. I suppose I could reduce the amount I feed at test time for now since she is lower than I'm comfy with. Just in case I need to feed her more later. Is this what normal BG numbers are supposed to be? I can't even imagine Olive staying around these numbers and not getting nervous. It may sound crazy, but I feel so much better when she's got room to drop. lol. Like, if she stayed around 200 I'd feel more relaxed. What are good and normal BG numbers for cats?

Also, What is the lowest number you can safely shoot?
 
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Do you have any other cats at home? My non diabetics have tested from high 40's to 90's. That latter outlier was when that cat was on prednisolone. When I cut his pred dose in half, the numbers came down to 70's. Most non diabetic cats will hang in the 50-80 range. We don't want cat on insulin any lower than 50, just no margin for error there.
 
Yes, We have another cat, Cindy. She's about 15-16. Olive is 13. I wish I could test Cindy but she's like a wild cat when it comes to us having to do anything hands on with her. I've told hubby how grateful I am this didn't happen to Cindy because I honestly don't know how we could have managed her. Olive is placid and lets us do what we need to. Wow! 50-80?! Oh my goodness. I'm shocked by those numbers. Shocked! I know I'm trying hard to get the nerve to shoot lower and lower numbers, but what do you think should be Olive's limit for now? That way I'll know if come the AMPS and she's still low what to do.
 
It's not Olive's limit - it's yours. ;) You can always stall, do not feed, and post for help when you get a number you aren't comfy shooting. I should have clarified above, the numbers I mentioned are on the human BG meters.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
It's not Olive's limit - it's yours. ;) You can always stall, do not feed, and post for help when you get a number you aren't comfy shooting. I should have clarified above, the numbers I mentioned are on the human BG meters.
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Well, Now that I've shot 130 and she did "okay" I think I'd still be nervous but I would shoot at 130 again. She's 103+ 6 so on the rise. So it looks like this cat mom can catch some zzz's before I test and feed her again. You think it would be safe to sleep for 2 hours or at this stage is it still not quite safe to sleep?
 
If all she's had is low carb food and she's up that much, catch a nap. Or wait 1/2 hour, test again, call it two rising tests in a row and hit the pillow for the rest of the night.
 
Yes, all she's had is a mix of raw and DM. I know the DM is considered low carb, but sometimes I think it spikes her too much. If I only fed the raw I think she'd do better in these cases. I'll retest at +6.5 and if she's still up I'll get some sleep afterwards. I wish I could sleep for the rest of the night but I've got to feed her at +10 as that's when I give the pepcid so she's all ready for the AM injection. I usually feed her no later than every 3 hours, but she has gone 4 hours once when we were out. Thank you for your help tonight. It was a relief just knowing you were there in case of problems.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
Pretty soon you'll be doing this all on your own. You've come a long way this last little while. :bighug:
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I appreciate that. The past 5 weeks have felt like a blur to me. One day melting into the other. I'm just so tired. You guys have taught me a great deal and I'm still learning. Hoping one day Olive will let me sleep mostly through the night. I haven't seen a whole night's sleep since all this began. She's 115+6.5 so looks like I get to sleep. Yea! Let's hope she doesn't go too terrible high by the AMPS. Maybe I should only feed her one more time at the +10 pill and give her body a break and let it rise naturally without any further food until then. She's gotten in her calories for the day, thankfully. That's rare.
 
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