12/08 Squamee AMPS 263

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judy and squamee(GA)

judy and squamee(GA)

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Last night was 375 and shot 1U
Amps 263 shoot .6? She vomited fluid during the night and had slight diarhhea. Ate some FF this morning, but not a lot. Seems a little more spacey than yesterday. I can test around +4, but then will be out all afternoon.
 
sending love to squamee, and tom sending headbutts and purrs.
 
AMPS 263 .6U
+3 226
PMPS (+13) 399

So I do at least .8. But do I do more? .9? 1? (or is that too great an increase? Did not give higher carb food today.
 
.8 is my vote. IMHO the effects of the carbs take a while [like an extra day maybe] to wear off. So though it's tempting, I used to try to not get too far out ahead on the dose if I was thinking the need might drop. My experience seemed to be that if carbs/dry fud were added over a period of days the effects of it seemed to compound. It just depends on how much HC she got really would be how much extra time you would give to let it wear off. If she really never ate much HC then I don't think what I'm talking about really wouldn't apply.
 
Thanks, guys. .8 it is.
She has been eating today. My new tact is to add some hot water to her food. That seems to help. And she didn't seem to eat more of the HC than of the LC, so we are back on LC. She does seem to prefer fish, so I am giving more fish than I normally would.
 
If the .8 doesn't cut it then you can always go to 1u mañana. :smile:

Her appetite swings are pretty crazy. H was more pancreatitis type swings. We'd be OK for a month then BAM 3-5 days of reduced appetite then another 3-6 weeks of everything OK. I would generally "reboot" his system with some dry or whatever I could entice him with to get him back into eating - to try to show him that eating was OK again and distract him from getting into food aversion. Then those BGs and doses would start up and up and I'd chicken out and go back to the LC. We did that a bunch of times.

I guess I mention this because my style was very much about trying to round the edges of the doses. But H was in ways more predictable than S. So I'm on the fence about how well my style of trying to round the edges really applies to S. And I was able to minimally round the edges too by increasing or reducing the appetite medications.

Hopefully you are continuing to do the SubQ LRS if you are suspecting CRF/CKD and that your vet is giving you the dose & frequency on that that matches that profile. F has CRF/CDK and he is supposed to get 100ml/day. But he gets more like 150 every other day. I think vets tend to give a lower amount per dose because they do not figure you are going to warm it up. The CRF sites may have better guidance on the appropriate dosing for that condition.
 
We are giving 100ml twice/week. That is per the vet's recommendation. He said her kidney numbers had improved since previous blood test. Creatine down from 3.3 to 2.2 and urea nitrogen down from 70 to 43. He said he believed the decrease was because of the fluids and to continue as we had been. We are about to give it again tonight. I am nervous because the last time was so scarey---she had trouble walking afterwards and then vomited. Vet said it had nothing to do with liquids, or anything I had done, but I am not sure I believe it.
 
I'll take your vets side this time - I don't think it had anything to do with it either. :smile: It takes a while to absorb into their body. You could always try playing with the frequency and see if you see any improvement [smoothing] of the appetite swings.
 
Gave the subQ with some difficulty. She squirmed more, and it took longer, and then she fought and pulled away, so we only got about 1/2 way. Am figuring can do the other 1/2 tomorrow. DH said there seemed to be some trouble in the line, so it took a lot longer. He said that it didn't keep flowing well, but he didn't know why. Any suggestions on what interferes with the flow and how to fix it?
 
SubQ tips

A few things:

1) Distance from the bag to the cat [you already are probably very aware of this]. The larger the distance the faster the flow.

2) Needle placement. Once the needle is in and it is kind of laying on her, you can gently - slowly move the needle in different direction - usually parallel to the cat - and this will achieve different flow rates. When you actually put the needle in it goes pretty much parallel to the cat. Hitting mussel will make it go s-l-o-w - and it's painful.

3) Do it where she is comfy. In S's case, under her sheet? Hang a hook in your ceiling directly over where she spend most of her time. Do it there without disturbing her from her "safe place." This is the most important advice I have for you or anyone doing SubQ. If they are comfy then it can take a while and it really doesn't matter. Make the system [their perceived security and comfort] work for you.

The bed you see H pictured in is where we would do his - he hung out there a lot. I actually put that bed in my office so it would be near me and I could keep an eye on him [he had other beds too]. But he did consider that bed a place of security and I made sure to foster that notion with him. It was on a low sofa in my office. He liked watching westerns for some reason - didn't care for any other TV. So we would often sit and watch westerns together and maybe catch a SubQ. :smile:

F has a bed up on top of a filing cabinet that he really likes. So what I did there was just taco him up in the bed and set him inside the bed down on a stool with a hook directly above that spot. He was generally happy to hang out in his bed and get his SubQ. When we were done, I just tacoed him back up and put him back up on the filing cabinet.

'Training' a cat to a bed is fairly easy with the help of a clean bath towel spread out inside the bed. For some reason cats just can't resist a clean bath towel to lay on.

4) When you go to put the needle in first pull up the tent - I mean really pull it up [gently] and get all the skin from under the cat around there chest up to the tent. I usually pull up the tent several times to do this. Then once all that skin is now on the right side of the cat [the top now instead of the bottom] you have a little room to gently release the tension of the tent as you put the needle in. This helps the initial prick be less painful AND it seem to help the chance of getting good flow perhaps by allowing the needle to go into the right layer of skin or not be up tight against some layer of skin.

5) Maybe try timing it when you think her pheno is at it's peak - while she's doped up and hopefully less up for a fight.
 
Thanks for those tips, Gator. She doesn't seem to mind at all when I insert the needle---much like when I give an insulin injection---there is really no reaction. It is when the fluids start going in that she objects. And last night I think perhaps the flow was stopping and starting, and she clearly felt something happening.
A cat that likes westerns?!!! Hi, ho Silver! ( are you old enough to know about the Lone Ranger?)
 
To know about Long Ranger yes. To have seen Lone Ranger on re-run yes. To have listened to the original radio series - heck no. He, seemed to be partial to Clint Eastwood [not so bad taste for a cat]. I don't know if it was the sounds or the pacing or what it was. I think I've become a little bigger fan of Westerns now because of it.
 
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