1/24 Cali PMPS: 365 (first time posting here--help?)

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beclt

beclt

Member Since 2011
posts from Lantus board: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=61978

This is my first time posting in this relaxed Lantus board. I am looking for some help and support and maybe I just wasn't in the right place. Everyone there was very helpful, but I don't think I can follow their protocol as closely as it is suggested.

My husband and I have grown increasingly frustrated. We feel as though we have not made any progress and are making Cali more uncomfortable throughout this process. We poke and prod her making her upset and uncomfortable. She is now afraid of strangers as she equates them with getting shots--or attempting to get shots rather. I have holes in my curtains from where she would retaliate.

The kicker is that, because she won't let anyone but us give her her shots, she would go without insulin when we would have to leave for a weekend. This past long weekend 4-5 days, she went without and her blood sugar was lower than it usually is on insulin. I don't think she ate that great (there was a house sitter here) but overall she was fine. We are really wondering if it is better if we don't give her her insulin and let her live her life. WE can test her if we feel like her clinical symptoms return (drinking water, knocking over vases, exessive peeing) but I don't know if waht we are doing now is really, truly helping.

Would love your thoughts and any experiences on this, if you have it.
 
You were starting to get really nice numbers on that .5u but then when you upped it to 1u she started going higher, my guess is that she is getting too much insulin and is now rebounding.

Personally if she was my cat I would go back down to the .5 and hold there until she stops bouncing like a rubber ball...This also maybe why she is fighting the shots because they make her feel worse rather than better.

So is it the shots or the testing that she is giving you problems with or both? And what exactly are you doing and what isn't working? Musette hated shots until I stopped shooting in her scruff, she just really dislikes her scruff being lifted to tent, I moved to shooting her in the side and flank and now she doesn't even look up from her food dish.

The problem with just stopping insulin and "letting her live her life" is that she will at the very least starve to death while eating everything in site, if she doesn't go into DKA, or she will go into organ failure, death by diabetes isn't a pretty death. Insulin is the hormone that allows the body to use the food that she is eating. When she eats her body breaks down that food into sugars that then need to have her body's cell unlocked so that they can use it to fuel her body...Insulin is the key to unlocking those cells. Without insulin to unlock the cells the body start to canabalize itself to try to get that fuel, it will attack its own organs, and muscles. This is not meant to scare you, but to make you realize what can happen if you just let nature take its course.

If you can give us some idea of what the problems are then maybe we can help you find solutions around them.

Mel, Maxwell, Musette & The Fur Gang
 
She is okay with the tests, just squirmy. The shots are about the same. I certainly wouldn't say she enjoys the process but we make due. But if it isn't us, it is no insulin at all. She isn't a super cuddly cat so getting her down to test her and shot her can be cumbersome.

I agree--i do feel like she might be getting too much insulin, but everyone has told me that we need to continue to increase. I feel like the .5 units is SO SMALL, it's almost like what is the difference? I don't want her to go without and be sick, but we are really at a loss and we need to live our lives too.
 
You would be amazed at what a tiny drop of insulin can do. Maxwell who is a BIG guy, went from 485 when dxed to remission and off insulin on .5u and when I say big I mean BIG...I'm 5'5 and he comes up to my knee when standing up, he also without stretching takes up the full lenght of my king size pillow and is lean enough to still lightly feel his ribs at 17.5lbs...he is big cat. Now Musette on the otherhand is a petite little thing at 8lbs and yet she needs 1.25u it is just one of the ECID kind of things.

But looking at Cali's spreadsheet she was giving you late blues on .5u yet the more you increase the higher her numbers go..that screams rebound. Musette was doing the very same thing when I first adopted her, I had to take her down below her ideal dose to get her to stop rebounding then slowly work my way back up with her. I still have to hold a dose with her longer than the TR-protocol calls for to get her to settle down and stop bouncing like a rubber ball...it took me forever to wrap my head around that less is more and that she just needs a lot more time to get use to feeling those normal/lower numbers so her liver will stop freaking out and sending her sky-high.

At first she would bounce at anything in the 300s, then the 200s, then the 100s, now it takes her hitting double digits to make her sail up, and just now she is finally stopped sailing into the red and black when she hits a lower than usual number, it is a very slow process and it just takes a lot of patiences.

You may need to take Cali down to .5u and hold there for a week or longer until she clears all the rebound to truly see where that dose is going to take her. But I would say it is worth a shot, going up isn't working the only place left is to go down. As far as that being too small of a dose, in the year and a half I have been on this board I have seen cats regulated on doses even smaller before they went completely off insulin, insulin is an extremely potent hormone, a little bit can go a long way.

Does Cali just not like being restrainted? Musette is a cuddler so she likes held for her tests, but Maxwell while he likes to sit by you doesn't like to be held. So for him, I just sit next to him, reach over and test his ear...Musette doesn't like to be restrained for her shots, so I feed her on a small table where I can sit next to her while her face is in the food dish, then tent and shoot on her side between her rib cage and her hind leg, she never even looks up.

But with both of them what helped the most was routine, always testing and shooting in the same spot. And even when it wasn't time for a shot, I still feed Musette in the same place, I still sit by her and pet her sides and even ocassionally tent where I normally shoot..so now she just thinks that is part of the routine for food...Mom feeds me on my table, mom pets me while I eat, mom plays with the skin on my side...etc. She doesn't even seem to know the difference between me petting her side and lifting the skin to when I actually give the shot, it is just her mealtime routine.

Mel, Maxwell, Musette & The Fur Gang
 
Thanks for the help. I think going down for a bit is worth a shot.

We do try to keep her in the same place for testing. We used to do it while she ate to distract her, but she doesn't like that anymore. We typically put her up on the counter and take care of it all at one time. It can be quick but if she is hungry, she gets really squirmy.

Any alarm to her wanting 4 cans of food a day?
 
Not at this point while her numbers are still so high, both Musette and Maxwell tried to eat me out of house and home when they were unregulated, since they are literally starving, now that Maxwell is OTJ and Musette is fairly well regulated they both are down to normal food consumption. Maxwell was eating at the very least 4 (5.5oz) cans of Friskies at first, now he eats maybe 1 1/2 -2 cans per day depending how much he likes the flavor being served. Musette was eating 3 cans a day now she is back down to 1 can a day split into 4 small meals and even some of that she will leave and come back to nibble on later.

Mel, Maxwell, Musette & The Fur Gang
 
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