Changing dose times

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Timewarpcat

Timewarpcat

Member Since 2022
My husband has a serious illness and there will be a flurry of appointments at strange times, possibly for a couple months.

My kitty is on prozinc that I give at 8 AM and 8 PM.

I am likely to be on the road at 6 AM sometimes.

Now, I can try to slowly adjust her to a new time over 3 or 4 days, then go back to 8AM.

The Prozinc is only effective for 7 hour intervals, though. Can I just make sure she doesn't get a double dip? It theoretically should be ok to give the insulin 2 hours early or late.

Is it better to just skip?

I will call the vet too, but I like to hear what others have done.

I've already adjusted her about a half hour for the time change.

Thanks!!
 
Timewarpcat said:
My husband has a serious illness and there will be a flurry of appointments at strange times, possibly for a couple months.

My kitty is on prozinc that I give at 8 AM and 8 PM.

I am likely to be on the road at 6 AM sometimes.

Now, I can try to slowly adjust her to a new time over 3 or 4 days, then go back to 8AM.

The Prozinc is only effective for 7 hour intervals, though. Can I just make sure she doesn't get a double dip? It theoretically should be ok to give the insulin 2 hours early or late.

Is it better to just skip?

I will call the vet too, but I like to hear what others have done.

I've already adjusted her about a half hour for the time change.

Thanks!!
Click to expand...
I hope your husband will be OK, I'll tag a prozinc user for you
Melissa
@FrostD
 
No, I haven't done a spreadsheet. Let's see if I can send the summary from the freestyle libre?

Hmmm, I took scrrenshots, but not allowed to upload?
 
I guess I can't send screenshots. She responds to the prozinc about 1.5 hours after giving it, and it lasts for 7 hours. Her high is about 350 and low is 225.

I was going to switch her to Levemir about Nov 1 and get another freestyle libre put on, but that's on hold for a bit, I guess. She's much improved on the dose she's got, even though the control isn't ideal yet.
 
So technically yes with those numbers/trends it is more than likely ok to shoot a few hours early. You just want to make sure she's rising enough and high enough to shoot - sometimes changing shot times can have odd effects on trends.

She could use a dose increase as well.

Now Levemir does not have as much flexibility...I personally would stay with ProZinc until schedule is more predictable. Levemir nadirs later, sometimes at the time of the next shot, so it makes those decisions harder to make.
 
My plan then, based on what you say, is to try and adjust the time over a few days. She and another cat are on antiseizure medicine and timing is everything with that, too. It gets complicated!!!

Thanks very much for the feedback on the Levemir.

I did adjust her dose up a smidgen to 1.9 units about a week ago and it's going very well. I got 31 gauge syringes, and these have more markings, so it's easier to make small changes. I just bought a caliper too, but I have to get it set up.

At 2 units, 2 months ago, she possibly had a crash. The vet was puzzled and did some reading and said the Freestyle Libre is designed to err on the side of caution since crashes can be deadly. She thinks the device reported lower blood sugar than she had. The kitty did not act like she was crashing. So I monitor her food intake like a hawk now, in case I messed that up, and smooth sailing ever since. It's possible she didn't eat enough that day. She is a fussy kitty.

Esther is a LOT better, jumping around and playing again, after months of treatment for the CNS infection, and then she got diabetes, and now the insulin. I suspect the toxoplasmosis caused her diabetes because her blood sugar went nuts soon after and she's only 6 years old. I gave her steroids for brain swelling, because it helped the other cat a lot, but it didn't help her. So I stopped after 2 weeks. So I don't think that's the cause.

I think what I will do is call it good enough with the new dosage of 1.9 units since she acts healthy again and I won't be home if she crashes. I will check with the vet. I don't feel I dare increase the dose more without another Freestyle Libre.

Maybe I can give a lower dose on days I can't keep an eye on her.

I'm not going to do a meter at this time since I am too overwhelmed already.

Thoughts? Thanks for being here.
 
Called the vet, and she said it's probably ok to adjust the time by a couple hours, but can't guarantee it will.

Ugh

Going to try and adjust slowly over a few days, as best I can. I would not say this vet is obsessively cautious. Her language gives me pause.
 
It's difficult because the second you say something like "yep do it!" ....something happens that all of a sudden makes it not safe. A cat version of Murphy's law or something lol

We typically say ProZinc has about an hour leeway, assuming you don't get very long duration from it. If duration is shorter, it's usually ok to vary times more than that - but every so often they'll throw a curveball, and consistency is key so we don't recommend it as a frequent thing. I suspect that's what your vet might be worried about, as well as the lower Libre readings you mentioned (she's right on that, they do tend to read artificially low at low numbers).

As for the meter, that's really up to you. One of our central themes here is home testing and data, so very few people would tell you to shoot blindly for any length of time. Things can change quickly and that's what makes most of us hesitant.
 
Yeah, I'm not happy about not using a meter, but I have too many grave situations going on at once to deal with that, too.
 
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