Librarianista
Member since 2021
Hi everyone -
First off, I am super grateful for the supportive and knowledgeable community here. My Google searches for Chloe's symptoms/behaviors almost always led me here and I've finally joined.
My Chloe is 13 and was first diagnosed with diabetes in October of 2020. She was initially prescribed Royal Canin diabetic food and 1 unit of vetsulin twice a day. I was not doing at home testing (not even aware of it), but she seemed to be mostly normal except for an increase in the number of hairballs (she had previously been on hairball formula food). After a routine checkup in February of 2021, we found that we went into remission!! At that time, we also switched to Purina DM and the frequent hairballs/gagging seemed to stop.
Fast forward to May 1, 2021, and I start noticing some of the old familiar signs: increased drinking and peeing. Vet confirms the diabetes is back and there's a UTI to boot. We go back on 1 unit of vetsulin b.i.d. and get the antibiotic shot for the UTI. The next day, Chloe doesn't eat anything and starts showing signs of hypo (twitching, odd lethargy), so we learn where the emergency vet is around 10 PM. They keep her for 2 days to stabilize her (where she also picks up a probable URI), and increase her dosage to 2 units b.i.d. and we schedule a followup appt. with her primary on May 21. (We would have done it sooner, but we were finally visiting family out of state after everyone was vaccinated.) Her fructosamine on 5/21 is still high (200-350 range), so they up her dosage to 2.5 units.
At this point, I bring up the topic of home testing for the first time and order a device (AlphaTrak 2). However, I was unable to get a viable blood sample for the first week of having it.
Chloe is still showing many signs of hyperglycemia - P/U and P/D, weakened back legs - to the point where we took her back to the emergency vet this weekend (5/29) because I was worried the UTI was back. It wasn't, but her BG was well over 600. They upped her dosage again to 3.5 units and helped me get my own sample so I can start doing home testing.
She has an appointment this Friday (6/4/21) with her primary to do a glucose curve, but I started doing my own today just to see where we are. We are HIGH (numbers in the spreadsheet) and I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do for her until that appointment. I'll certainly be calling before Friday with the numbers and asking about switching to a different brand. I know hyper is not as bad as hypo, but I'm still worried about how my girl is doing and if she can keep going like this for the rest of the week.
I will also mention that neither vet mentioned the presence of ketones in their testing over the last month. The primary explicitly mentions that they're *not* there, the emergency didn't mention them at all.
First off, I am super grateful for the supportive and knowledgeable community here. My Google searches for Chloe's symptoms/behaviors almost always led me here and I've finally joined.
My Chloe is 13 and was first diagnosed with diabetes in October of 2020. She was initially prescribed Royal Canin diabetic food and 1 unit of vetsulin twice a day. I was not doing at home testing (not even aware of it), but she seemed to be mostly normal except for an increase in the number of hairballs (she had previously been on hairball formula food). After a routine checkup in February of 2021, we found that we went into remission!! At that time, we also switched to Purina DM and the frequent hairballs/gagging seemed to stop.
Fast forward to May 1, 2021, and I start noticing some of the old familiar signs: increased drinking and peeing. Vet confirms the diabetes is back and there's a UTI to boot. We go back on 1 unit of vetsulin b.i.d. and get the antibiotic shot for the UTI. The next day, Chloe doesn't eat anything and starts showing signs of hypo (twitching, odd lethargy), so we learn where the emergency vet is around 10 PM. They keep her for 2 days to stabilize her (where she also picks up a probable URI), and increase her dosage to 2 units b.i.d. and we schedule a followup appt. with her primary on May 21. (We would have done it sooner, but we were finally visiting family out of state after everyone was vaccinated.) Her fructosamine on 5/21 is still high (200-350 range), so they up her dosage to 2.5 units.
At this point, I bring up the topic of home testing for the first time and order a device (AlphaTrak 2). However, I was unable to get a viable blood sample for the first week of having it.
Chloe is still showing many signs of hyperglycemia - P/U and P/D, weakened back legs - to the point where we took her back to the emergency vet this weekend (5/29) because I was worried the UTI was back. It wasn't, but her BG was well over 600. They upped her dosage again to 3.5 units and helped me get my own sample so I can start doing home testing.
She has an appointment this Friday (6/4/21) with her primary to do a glucose curve, but I started doing my own today just to see where we are. We are HIGH (numbers in the spreadsheet) and I'm not sure what, if anything, I can do for her until that appointment. I'll certainly be calling before Friday with the numbers and asking about switching to a different brand. I know hyper is not as bad as hypo, but I'm still worried about how my girl is doing and if she can keep going like this for the rest of the week.
I will also mention that neither vet mentioned the presence of ketones in their testing over the last month. The primary explicitly mentions that they're *not* there, the emergency didn't mention them at all.
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