Pandasmom
Member Since 2010
Hi Everyone,
We're looking for any advice/insight.
Background -- this is my second sugar cat, first cat passed away about 10 years ago, but this board was hugely helpful back then.
Current cat is Panda. She has had IBD for several years.
She was first diagnosed with diabetes in June 2019. It was a complicated time. They discovered the diabetes while running bloodwork associated with double knee surgery. So in the middle of recovering from knee surgery, we also gradually switched her off of Prednisolone and onto Budesonide. She was already eating Nulo Turkey/Chicken but she'd get a small amount of kibble. We stopped the kibble immediately. She had a few weeks of Lantus then went into remission. We were hopeful that the switch to Budesonide and strict food regimen would be enough.
At the beginning of Oct, her numbers were up again and we were noticing extra water drinking. Vet confirmed diabetes was back, blood panel showed nothing else unusual, so we started on Lantus again.
As you can see from her chart, she's all over the place. The vet suggested starting at 1 unit every 12 hours. I got worried this might be too much so I dropped her to 0.5 unit and started adapting more closely. That doesn't seem to have worked either.
We've been trying to figure out what's going on... here are some possible variables
- we were giving her some freeze-dried chicken (no other ingredients) because she really wants something crunchy and it seemed like a reasonable treat to associate with testing. We have stopped giving her the freeze-dried chicken a few days ago.
- it seems that she gets higher numbers on days that she's not eating well (which seems counter-intuitive to me). Given her IBD, she has good days and bad days, although, outwardly at least, her bad days aren't too bad (no puking, no diarrhea, still purrs happily with interaction). It's not a perfectly clear pattern either.
- is there residual pain from surgery/arthritis in the knees or something else (IBD?) She gets 25mg Gabapentin twice per day. She weighs 9 pounds and higher doses than that make her pretty groggy. We might try giving it to her 3 times per day to see if that has any effect, but we haven't yet
- she seems slightly less playful than normal these last few weeks, but not hugely so. She's still interested in the laser pointer and "bed mice" and plays, but not for as long as she was doing in Sept. Given her knee surgery, IBD, and diabetes, we have no idea which is impacting this.
- her personality is otherwise normal. She's not hiding, she purrs the instant we pet her or pick her up, she comes over for cuddles, she sleeps in the open.
- her weight is stable.
- we had started a new vial of Lantus in Oct with this round, but then a few days ago when she still wasn't settling, we started another new vial just in case
- we normally give her her meds (AM: Gabapentin, Budesonide, Pepcid, Cypropheptadine, PM: Gabapentin, Cyproheptadine) after her BG/shot (all together as one routine). I'd started giving her meds an hour before her BG/shot to (1) make sure she'd be hungry after her shot (2) possibly make the BG check less painful. We went back to giving it all together a few days ago.
- she's pretty calm with BG checks, I sit her between my legs on the floor and lightly restrain her. She stays there until I "release" her... but it's more of a cue to her, she could easily jump out if she wanted to. It takes us less than 30 seconds to do usually so I don't think it's putting any great stress on her.
- we had been only checking pre-shot because her numbers weren't getting anywhere near risk of hypo and I was trying to save her ears, minimize stress on her. However, the last few days, we've been doing a few more in-between checks. We haven't done a full curve again yet, but her numbers are so weird that I'm not convinced that a one day curve would give a great overall representation at the moment.
- in the interest of giving all details I can think of -- she gets petroleum jelly daily. It helps stop her from getting hairballs and she loves it. She thinks it's a treat. So with each BG check these days, she gets some to lick when I take some out to put on her ear.
- we give her shot in the scruff of her neck. I'd been moving it around a bit, sometimes lower. I've now gone back to staying closely to the scruff in case it somehow absorbs differently.
- she gets fed every 12 hours. She gets cyproheptadine as an appetite stimulant and eats most of her food about 1-3 hours after getting the cyproheptadine, but is a bit of a grazer so she eats it a few nibbles at a time. So with her current timing, she'd eat most of her food about 1-3 hours after getting her insulin shot, but it is available to her all the time.
So... any guesses?
Thanks
Pandasmom
We're looking for any advice/insight.
Background -- this is my second sugar cat, first cat passed away about 10 years ago, but this board was hugely helpful back then.
Current cat is Panda. She has had IBD for several years.
She was first diagnosed with diabetes in June 2019. It was a complicated time. They discovered the diabetes while running bloodwork associated with double knee surgery. So in the middle of recovering from knee surgery, we also gradually switched her off of Prednisolone and onto Budesonide. She was already eating Nulo Turkey/Chicken but she'd get a small amount of kibble. We stopped the kibble immediately. She had a few weeks of Lantus then went into remission. We were hopeful that the switch to Budesonide and strict food regimen would be enough.
At the beginning of Oct, her numbers were up again and we were noticing extra water drinking. Vet confirmed diabetes was back, blood panel showed nothing else unusual, so we started on Lantus again.
As you can see from her chart, she's all over the place. The vet suggested starting at 1 unit every 12 hours. I got worried this might be too much so I dropped her to 0.5 unit and started adapting more closely. That doesn't seem to have worked either.
We've been trying to figure out what's going on... here are some possible variables
- we were giving her some freeze-dried chicken (no other ingredients) because she really wants something crunchy and it seemed like a reasonable treat to associate with testing. We have stopped giving her the freeze-dried chicken a few days ago.
- it seems that she gets higher numbers on days that she's not eating well (which seems counter-intuitive to me). Given her IBD, she has good days and bad days, although, outwardly at least, her bad days aren't too bad (no puking, no diarrhea, still purrs happily with interaction). It's not a perfectly clear pattern either.
- is there residual pain from surgery/arthritis in the knees or something else (IBD?) She gets 25mg Gabapentin twice per day. She weighs 9 pounds and higher doses than that make her pretty groggy. We might try giving it to her 3 times per day to see if that has any effect, but we haven't yet
- she seems slightly less playful than normal these last few weeks, but not hugely so. She's still interested in the laser pointer and "bed mice" and plays, but not for as long as she was doing in Sept. Given her knee surgery, IBD, and diabetes, we have no idea which is impacting this.
- her personality is otherwise normal. She's not hiding, she purrs the instant we pet her or pick her up, she comes over for cuddles, she sleeps in the open.
- her weight is stable.
- we had started a new vial of Lantus in Oct with this round, but then a few days ago when she still wasn't settling, we started another new vial just in case
- we normally give her her meds (AM: Gabapentin, Budesonide, Pepcid, Cypropheptadine, PM: Gabapentin, Cyproheptadine) after her BG/shot (all together as one routine). I'd started giving her meds an hour before her BG/shot to (1) make sure she'd be hungry after her shot (2) possibly make the BG check less painful. We went back to giving it all together a few days ago.
- she's pretty calm with BG checks, I sit her between my legs on the floor and lightly restrain her. She stays there until I "release" her... but it's more of a cue to her, she could easily jump out if she wanted to. It takes us less than 30 seconds to do usually so I don't think it's putting any great stress on her.
- we had been only checking pre-shot because her numbers weren't getting anywhere near risk of hypo and I was trying to save her ears, minimize stress on her. However, the last few days, we've been doing a few more in-between checks. We haven't done a full curve again yet, but her numbers are so weird that I'm not convinced that a one day curve would give a great overall representation at the moment.
- in the interest of giving all details I can think of -- she gets petroleum jelly daily. It helps stop her from getting hairballs and she loves it. She thinks it's a treat. So with each BG check these days, she gets some to lick when I take some out to put on her ear.
- we give her shot in the scruff of her neck. I'd been moving it around a bit, sometimes lower. I've now gone back to staying closely to the scruff in case it somehow absorbs differently.
- she gets fed every 12 hours. She gets cyproheptadine as an appetite stimulant and eats most of her food about 1-3 hours after getting the cyproheptadine, but is a bit of a grazer so she eats it a few nibbles at a time. So with her current timing, she'd eat most of her food about 1-3 hours after getting her insulin shot, but it is available to her all the time.
So... any guesses?
Thanks
Pandasmom
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