Sabrina's Initial Numbers

Cara & Sabrina

Cara & Sabrina

Member Since 2021
Hi! Please look at Sabrina's initial numbers on her spreadsheet. She has been on one unit of Basaglar for 3 weeks. I suspect that the recommendation will be to increase her dose in some way.

Changing her to complete canned food is also on the to do list, but I was advised on here to wait until after we have some data. I'm wondering when I should start removing the dry food, how much can food to give, how often, etc. I work full time and am out of the house for 10 to 14 hours a day. I've been working on getting home for her pm dose, and then leaving again to run errands if needed.

Please share your advice!
 
I am considering investing in the timed feeders, but I'd need 2 and that's another expense. I'm not sure how it will go with my 2 cats who like to eat and are now always begging for canned food, so they might eat each other's food.

I currenlty have dry food down all the time, and feed 1/4-1/3 of a Friskies can before dosing. Therefore, I don't know the times when she's eating otherwise.
 
Hi Cara,

Sabrina is beautiful! Great job on starting testing. With SLGS, you hold doses for 7 days and then do a curve (testing every 2 hours for 12 hours or every 3 hours for 18 hours). This will tell you how a dose is doing. Here is an excerpt from the Dosing Methods sticky, with highlights in purple for what pertains to your situation:

Hold the dose for at least a week:
  • Unless your cat won’t eat or you suspect hypoglycemia
  • Unless your kitty falls below 90 mg/dL (5 mmol/L). If kitty falls below 90 mg/dL (5 mmol/L) decrease the dose by 0.25 unit immediately.
After 1 week at a given dose perform a 12 hour curve, testing every 2 hours OR perform an 18 hour curve, testing every 3 hours. Note: Random spot checks are often helpful to "fill in the blanks" on kitty's spreadsheet. The goal is to learn how low the current dose is dropping kitty prior to making dose adjustments.
  • If nadirs are more than 150 mg/dl (8.3 mmol/L), increase the dose by 0.25 unit
  • If nadirs are between 90 (5 mmol/L) and 149 mg/dl (8.2 mmol/L), maintain the same dose
  • If nadirs are below 90 mg/dl (5mmol/L), decrease the dose by 0.25 unit
As your cat's blood glucose begins to fall mostly in the desired range [lowest point of the curve approaching 100 mg/dl (5.5 mmol/L) and pre-shot value around or below 300 mg/dl (16.6 mmol/L)], do lengthen the waiting time between dose increases. If you decide to change another factor (e.g., diet or other medications), don't increase the insulin dose until the other change is complete (but decrease the dose if your cat's glucose numbers consistently fall below 90 mg/dl (5.0 mmol/L) as a result of the change).

So if you'd like to make the change to wet food, I would hold this dose to see how Sabrina's BG levels react before considering increasing the dose. Many kitties can go into remission with a simple diet change, but you'd have to be sure you can be home, say on a weekend, to test her and monitor her behavior as the lowering of the glucose levels can be pretty dramatic after the removal of dry food.

Does this make sense?

 
Thank you, Katherine! That means that if I'm changing to all low carb can food, I should make that change on a weekend? If a cat's glucose levels do go down dramatically with diet change, do they drop the same day? Or is the danger time within the next 3 days or more?

It seems like a good course would be to hold this dose for now, change to all can this weekend, then see how her numbers look. Do I watch them for a week or more before considering a dosage change? Sabrina's BG levels are consistently in the 300s. Is that high for a newly diagnosed cat?
 
Cara & Sabrina said:
Thank you, Katherine! That means that if I'm changing to all low carb can food, I should make that change on a weekend? If a cat's glucose levels do go down dramatically with diet change, do they drop the same day? Or is the danger time within the next 3 days or more?

It seems like a good course would be to hold this dose for now, change to all can this weekend, then see how her numbers look. Do I watch them for a week or more before considering a dosage change? Sabrina's BG levels are consistently in the 300s. Is that high for a newly diagnosed cat?
Click to expand...
They are high but definitely not unusual for a newly diagnosed cat. If you look back to September 2020 on my Ruby's spreadsheet you'll see she was pretty high for a long time until I joined the FDMB, started testing and got things under control. Taking away dry food helped. A kitty for whom the removal of dry food made a huge difference was Simba: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xk8mpRya4ODwSc9Khmjssjo-tHPSJvw1EDAoJMx0mkU/edit#gid=0

I would make the change and then monitor to see if Sabrina needs an increase or decrease after that. If you can post every day here with Sabrina's numbers, we can keep an eye on her with you. Just make sure you have a hypo kit at the ready.
 
I'll work on making the food switch this weekend. I have to stock up on more cans and figure out how much to feed. I found some of the timed feeders on facebook marketplace for half the cost and I'm picking them up tonight. I hope that will help give me options to give her more small meals while I'm at work. My other cat is getting noticeably bigger over the past month and not grooming as well, so it will be a tricky balancing act between the two! We see the vet tomorrow so I'm interested to hear what she says.
 
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