Re: 12/16 Gracie AMPS 336 +1 348 +2 253 +3 214 +5 273
I tell you...you all in FDMB are the best. I can't count how many times you have come to our condo with supporting and encouraging words. Thank you so much.
Claudia: everything in your post is so true; Mike and I went out for lunch today and agreed that we HAVE to relax about this. We cannot continue to be so driven by each cycle. We do love Gracie so much and we make sure we spend alot of time with her that we aren't prodding, poking, etc. and that we spend alot of time praising her for being such a good, patient girl. I know that for you, Claudia, it must be harder to have gone through this dance, be out of it, and then have to come back into it then it is for us to just be starting it. You have had a taste of "the other side" and I'm sure it's tough dragging out all that stuff and starting over again. I commend your wonderful spirit.
Libby: yes, Lucy has beat you to our condo TWICE this week :lol: :lol: When we look at her SS or Tuffy's SS, I just scroll through quickly and show Mike..see...Lucy was like Gracie and (sorry, Barbara) Tuffy was worse. :lol: :lol: And the time it took was not important...it was the fact that they did "snap". We so appreciate what you wrote, Libby, and that you, like Jill and the others took the time to do it during the holidays when everyone as so much going on. So when do I get that "PITA Newbie of 2010" award I was talking about? :lol: :lol: I promise I will try so hard to not get too caught up in the pinks but as I have said before...it's the worry that it is doing permanent damage to her organs that freaks me out more than the numbers. My wonderful vet says that no, it's not great for her to be there but that some cats actually go months and months at really high numbers (400 higher) with no treatment at all because their beans (my word, not hers) didn't catch it and she worries more about those kitties. Thanks for asking about Tobey.
So...quick Tobey update: the board certified vet radiologist at our clinic started out by telling me that she HOPED it was just a cyst on his thymus because in all her years of experience, she had never seen a thymus show up on a cat radiograph...not even a kitten. However, today was our blessed day because she said the US showed that it is totally 100% thymus tissue....nothing else. Since his URI a couple months ago, Tobey's eosinophils have been up and he's still testing mildly for a virus in the nutrition response testing and so the NRT vet (Dr. B), our regular vet (Dr. M) and the radiologist feel his thymus is just busy making Tcells. We are to have it rechecked in three months. He has made alot of progress though and with the addition of the Allerplex last week, his snuffly nose is clear.
And lastly for my novel condo, the IM vet called me today. I had faxed her the protocol, info on Somogyi, and some other materials. In a nutshell:
1. I told her I had not taken Gracie off the insulin; she said if I wasn't going to do that, that I should at least take her to .5u and see what she does and then if she doesn't get normal numbers (her definition: in the 100s), the I should take her to 1u. I told her that we had already done that and that we did it in much smaller increments and gave Gracie time to adjust at each dose and I didn't feel taking her down to .5u only to have to bring her up again was appropriate...esp skipping through what might be her fitting dose. She said Gracie's fast dives indicate she has too much insulin but I asked if it was more likely that (a) Gracie's onset was fast that particular cycle and/or (b) perhaps Gracie had some insulin of her own working and that Gracie didn't necessarily metabolize her insulin the same way every time...or else she'd be regulated. I drew her attention to the fact that Gracie has only been just barely below 50 on one occasion on this dose and I got her up immediately and that she has primarily been running 90 or above...so how could she have too much insulin?
2. I asked her if she looked at what I sent her on Somogyi and that Gracie's curve did not look like that; I explained my understanding of liver training school and that Gracie was not the only cat doing this but since she didn't have wifi, I couldn't show her other SSs. I asked her if she was familiar with Dr. Hodgkins (yes, I know she is not a lantus fan) and had she read the info on her website about these liver bounces AND that in general, while males are more likely to be FD,females are more difficult to regulate as they tend to, generally, do more of this bouncing. She acquiesced that point that the liver can cause these bounces and backed off that Gracie was having Somoygi rebound.
3. She told me that
I am putting Gracie in danger
by allowing her to be hyperglycemic and then fall to hypoglycemia and that every time I allow her to be in the 50s much less 30s/40s, that I am
because she is not getting sugar to her brain. I told her that if Gracie gets in the 30s/40s that we are working extremely hard to get her up using karo and that we work hard to keep her from falling below 50. She said that looking at Gracie's SS, she believes I allow Gracie to be
"chronically hypoglycemic".
When I told Dr. M this, she was appalled. She said she does not believe those few drops below 50 cause brain damage...that brain damage is caused by uncaught and prolonged hypoglycemia where the cat goes into seizures. I also told the IM that, to my knowledge and what I had been told, no LL cat that was being monitored as we do had gone into seizures in the 30s...to my knowledge; I also told her how many cats had gone OTJ since 2008. No comment.
4. She said I am defeating the purpose of giving insulin when I steer her numbers with HC gravy or karo. I do struggle with this myself as well but I know I cannot allow her to get below 50.
5. She said I should stabilize Gracie's diet...agreed; we are going to try Feline Future with WN like many of you do. She then told me how I was exposing her to salmonella and E. coli.
6. She said the protocol we use is only one of hundreds for Lantus and that is only one university working on it and it was only ONE opinion on how to use lantus in cats. I did ask her to send me materials but she pretty much said that if I was not going to follow her advice and kept endangering my cat, that she didn't think I would be swayed by her info.
So...bottom line was I just told her that I felt we had very different approaches to FD and I appreciated her time. So much for an informative discussion.
