Second week in and sudden prolonged glucose spike??

swinneg

swinneg

Member Since 2026
Hello,

This is our second week giving Nutmeg insulin and she has been doing pretty ok so far, staying in the 100s and occasionally above 200 or below 100. But for some reason last night her glucose spiked to over 350 and has been between 350-HI (unreadable on the Libre 3 but assumed low 400s) since, despite having her normal .75u of Lantus at 8:00AM. We are using a Libre 3 monitor to track, but also double testing with a manual meter which reads about 30 less than the libre 3. We have been having trouble with her dosing, the first day on 1u she crashed down to 38 and freaked us out so we dropped her down to .5u which she was doing good on, then started getting back into the 200s regularly so we upped it to .75u and now I just have no idea what to do. We have also been struggling to transition her over to wet food from her high carb dry food and I don't think she's been getting enough calories. We feed her 3-4 times a day, usually one of the sheba perfect portion pod things and about a tablespoon of her old dry food so she actually eats more than a third of the wet food. She eats between 1/2 - 2/3 of these meals but the vet said she should be eating 200 calories a day, and the wet food is only 35-40 cal per pod so i'm concerned about her calorie intake. Her glucose dropped a tiny bit before I went to sleep last night and I was worried because we were woken up at midnight by a low glucose alarm two nights ago (it was low 50s so I gave her a treat and monitored), so I gave her an extra handful of dry food before going to sleep. Could this have caused this prolonged glucose spike that is double what she usually is??
 
I think what you are possibly seeing is a bounce. Definition in this post. The night of the 21st, looks like her lowest value yet on insulin. Bounces are caused by lows they aren't used to yet, or fast drops. The other thing that could be happening is seeing the impact of a reduced dose - sometimes that impact is seen in later cycles. And third possibility is that dry food. It can take a few days for the impact of high carb dry food to work it's way out of her system. At this point, just keep giving 0.75 units and be patient. She will come down.

If you are going to be feeding dry food on a regular basis, you won't be able to stick with TR for dosing. It's that impact on blood glucose (not as predictable as wet) that makes it not safe with Tight Regulation.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
I think what you are possibly seeing is a bounce. Definition in this post. The night of the 21st, looks like her lowest value yet on insulin. Bounces are caused by lows they aren't used to yet, or fast drops. The other thing that could be happening is seeing the impact of a reduced dose - sometimes that impact is seen in later cycles. And third possibility is that dry food. It can take a few days for the impact of high carb dry food to work it's way out of her system. At this point, just keep giving 0.75 units and be patient. She will come down.

If you are going to be feeding dry food on a regular basis, you won't be able to stick with TR for dosing. It's that impact on blood glucose (not as predictable as wet) that makes it not safe with Tight Regulation.
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Thank you for the information! I don't want to feed her this dry food, but I can't seem to get her to eat enough calories through the wet food so I am trying to slowly wean her off of it being mixed into the wet food. Is the 100ish calories/day she is getting from the what she eats of the wet food + treats ok while we transition her off dry food?
 
Wendy&Neko said:
How much does Nutmeg weigh? Is she at her ideal weight? 100 calories seems low.
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Her ideal weight is 10lbs and she is about 11lbs at the moment. The vet told us to try to feed her 200 cals a day, but she isn’t eating enough of the wet food to equal that. I’m estimating she eats about 100 cals of the wet food, so I am trying to supplement the rest with treats and her old dry food because I don’t want her to get sick or waste away. Apologies for the delayed response, something came up at work that I had to deal with.
 
This calculator is only a rough starting point calorie calculator but it's a start. Cats vary in calorie needs based on age, metabolism, activity level so what works for Nutmeg may be a bit different, but the calculator says 196 calories, of which 20 calories could be treats.
 
I’m hoping we can find a wet food that she likes enough to actually eat, but I worry that she’s not eating enough calories because she is not eating the full portions of the wet food.
 
Have you tried Fancy feast pates? They have several low carb flavors,my kittys get a rotation of 5 different kinds. They do well on them unless Panzer has pancreatitis then you gotta try multiple foods Weruva is a good low carb & low phosphorus wet food. The BFF are the ones we tried. Dry food is hard to get them away from, I started weening my boy shortly before a full dental leaving his 2 top k9 teeth left. I removed the dry food completely once his dental was done made it a little easier.
 
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