Rapidly dropping BG

Chellie

Member Since 2025
Hi my cat Cash was recently diagnosed with steroid-induced diabetes. Started on 1 unit, moved to 2 and now has been on 2.5 for 6 days. He has been feeling much better but still staying high. However, this morning at 6:15 his pre-dose numbers were in the low 300s and by 8:30am he was at 190 and dropping rapidly. It's now 9am and he's down to 142 and I'm worried. He's never been this low (which might be good), but it happened very fast and the Libre still shows he's dropping fast. We have been slowly lowering the amount of high carb wet food mixed in with his newer low carb food, but maybe we should have waited to do that until he had 7 full days on this new dose. I offered him a few more bites of food and am staying home from work this morning to monitor. Should I offer him high carb food now? wait and see? I'm very nervous thank you!
 
I can do a mix of his high and low carb to get around that amount, maybe 1/3 high (40%), 2/3 low (8%)
 
The way the spreadsheet is, the rapid drops have happened in between +2 and +3, so he was 224 at 8:15 am, but is now at 145 at 9am. It does seem to be holding steady there, for now. The drop from 224 to 145 was rapid and worried me. at 9:15 I will update the +3 number.
 
I do have a handheld. I haven't had any luck using it yet (I tried twice with his ear and couldn't get enough blood). Do you think its worth trying again?
 
The way the spreadsheet is, the rapid drops have happened in between +2 and +3, so he was 224 at 8:15 am, but is now at 145 at 9am. It does seem to be holding steady there, for now. The drop from 224 to 145 was rapid and worried me. at 9:15 I will update the +3 number.
You need to put in all the numbers. Like you can put in the number @2.5 (to mean 2 1/2 hours) or @2.25)

You just have to jam the extra numbers in and manually color code it. You can also put in +15 min or +30 min to indicate that a reading was taken 15 or 30 minutes later.
 
The way the spreadsheet is, the rapid drops have happened in between +2 and +3, so he was 224 at 8:15 am, but is now at 145 at 9am. It does seem to be holding steady there, for now. The drop from 224 to 145 was rapid and worried me. at 9:15 I will update the +3 number.
Did you feed the mix of food? Or has he stabilized on his own?
 
Gave him a teaspoon of that wet mix. I did already give him a little more food around 8:30. He's at 131 and still falling.
 
I gave him one more spoonful of the wet mix. He was 131 at 9:15 but is 126 now at 9:20. Freestyle is using the changing slowly symbol now. I could tell that he was responding to the lower BG though, he seems hungry and a bit restless. Libre is about 15 minutes behind from what I've read, so perhaps the food will show in his numbers soon.
 
He is at 115 now, 15 minutes after 131 at 9:15. Hoping I see it level out really soon or even go up slightly.
 
Trying not to panic :nailbiting:. Gave him a bit more of the wet mix, then a small spoonful of HC after I saw your message. He is at 107 and "changing slowly", but like I said, I believe Libre lags a bit. I do believe he will eat more HC if needed. If we can get this stabilized, I will definitely need advice on how to handle his second shot tonight.
 
Trying not to panic :nailbiting:. Gave him a bit more of the wet mix, then a small spoonful of HC after I saw your message. He is at 107 and "changing slowly", but like I said, I believe Libre lags a bit. I do believe he will eat more HC if needed. If we can get this stabilized, I will definitely need advice on how to handle his second shot tonight.
We are going to cut his dose so you can continue with the transition to low-carb food. We will decide later about the new dose… How much to cut
 
I prefer karo because it’s easy to mix 50/50 with water and syringe into an oral syringe and give about 1-1.5 mL onto the gums and into the side of kitty’s mouth. Also, I am starting to wonder if honey works as well recently because I keep seeing cats not responding (BG) very well to honey. The plain corn syrup seems to raise BG more and faster.

But let me know what happens…. Waiting….
 
Since 8:30 he has had quite a bit of extra food, so it will be pretty concerning to me if it doesn't start to raise his BG. And we had been slowly decreasing his HC food for a little while now so I'm a bit shocked at this reaction today which has basically been my worst fear. Maybe the dose has just finally broken through?
 
This could take a while. He is still in very safe territory though so no danger of hypo at this point. We just need him to stabilize
 
It's hard to say what the ratio is now, we were doing around 1/4 can HC to 1/3 can LC, then transitioned more to 1/8 can HC to 1/3 to 1/2 can LC. Before diabetes he was 100% HC, then it was more 1/2 and 1/2 when first starting out.
 
He usually has lunch around noon. If his numbers continue to rise, do I just want until then to feed him?
 
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