? 12/20 HELP with dosage adjustment while food transitioning

[Bandit's Mom]

Some background - http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...able-pen-using-a-syringe.222955/#post-2494921

Bandit is still on 25% carb dry kibble (please see above post wrt my pet food challenges! ( ). We've recently increased her dose to 1.25U (SLGS) after we managed to get 1/2 unit syringes sent to us from the US.

Her BGs are still largely over 300 and it looks like we may need to increase her dose over the next few days - maybe every week till we see some yellows and blues.

The rub is that I've managed to get someone to bring me Young Again Zero kibble from the US and I hope to get it in 20 days or so. I'm presuming (hoping) that Bandit's insulin needs will be far lower once she is on YA rather than the HC kibble she is on right now.

My question is, considering that I'm probably going to have to increase her dose every week for the next 2-3 weeks and maybe go as high as 2U on the current food, how do I transition her to the new food without causing any hypoglycemic events?

I do not want to put off the dose increase till the YA food arrives because Bandit is showing extreme symptoms of polyuria, polydypsia and polyphagia. She has lost a ton of weight and I cannot see her sloshing around in sugar like this. It's taking everything I have to restrict myself from increasing her dose by more that 0.25 per week as per SLGS! (((

Could really use some advice! Thank you!

 

[Sue and Luci]

After 14 cycles on SLGS you're increasing, right?

Once she's off kibble - it will take a little bit of time for that food to clear out of her system. The problem is no one really knows how long that could take - every cat is different in that regard. So once she's off ALL the kibble, I'd suggest testing every two hours to see when/if she drops. Once she starts the downward trend then you can judge how far the dose is taking her.

Try to be patient during this time. Luci had a food change when I threw out all the kibble - and she went to a 100% wet food diet - Fancy Feast only - it didn't really bring her numbers down enough - she still needed help from insulin - and she's doing better today because of it. As you can see from her SS we've increased and decreased her dosage many times over the last two years - so let's hope that by removing the kibble you get to see a much better picture of what Bandit's numbers are really doing.

 

[Bandit's Mom]

Yes, increasing every 7 days/14 cycles as per SLGS. Our first increase took nearly 3 weeks as we had to wait for the 1/2 unit syringes to reach us.