Re: 2/23 Trixie AMPS 189, +6 107
Hi Nicole-
Thank you for the welcome and compliment. I'm a little biased, but I think Trixie's a pretty cute little cat myself. That picture was taken her first Christmas with us. Long story short, she had been abandoned by our former neighbors. She was nearly starved to death when we found her; you could see her skeleton through her fur. Her avatar was taken a few months later, after she gained a few pounds. That was 6 years ago.
Her course of treatment is, shall we say, in "transition" right now. On Jan 28, she started on 1 unit BID. For the first few weeks, we were only spot-checking her BG...trying to ease her into all these pricks and pokes. Last Sunday, though, she caught me off guard by tossing a +6 55 at us. At that point, we immediately started with the AMPS/PMPS testing, and so far this week we've also been able to get the +6 after her morning shot. Unforutnately I'm not going to be able to do a full curve for another week-ish, due to my work schedule.
The reason she's in "transition" is because the vet is a combination of pleased and concerened (about hypo) with Trixie's response. Obviously, she has responded quite well (her intial, pre-insulin BG was 371), so the vet wants to begin decreasing her dose. As of yeseterday, the vet wants to try 1 unit, once a day, and gave me a "no shoot" number of 170. I want to go with 1/2 unit BID, but the vet thinks Trixie is responding very well to her diet change (more about that below), that she wanted to give the 1unit/1x day a try first, to see where that puts Trixie's numbers. Knowing how Lantus works, I'm iffy on this approach, but I can say the vet is not completely close-minded about the 1/2 unit BID that I proposed; she just wants to try this first. I'll be touching base with her tomorrow, to iron this out a little better, when we have a couple days worth of data to go by. Her numbers did creep up a little bit today, but I figure they are good enough that a day or two of humoring the vet won't hurt. But that doesn't mean I won't push hard for the BID dosing I want to follow. I want to keep the vet on my side, both for Trixie's sake, and for the sake of other future kitties she treats.
I did forget to mention here yesterday that I think Trixie had some sort of hypo episode last week, and that's another thing that has the vet's radar on high alert. At the time, I thought it was an episode of FHS - she has a lot of FHS symptoms. but never anything like this before. It was as if she was hallucinating; she acted like something was flying around her head and swatted at it a few times. It was several hours after her evening shot, and the whole thing lasted less than 10 seconds. After seeing Sunday's 55, I started thinking maybe it wasn't FHS after all. I mentioned the episode to the vet, and that - along with the data I provided - is what got her thinking harder about changing Trixie's dose sooner rather than later. The vet was unsure as to whether or not the episode could have been because of her possibly being hypo or if it was FHS, but it caught her attention as a possibility. And unfortunately I wasn't testing regularly at the time.
Before diagnosis, Trix was eating a 50/50 mix of Wellness Chicken canned, and Orijen dry. We completely removed the dry food from her diet 4 days before she started insulin. It seems the food change has had a huge impact, but only time will tell.
Amy
PS Baby's avatar is adorable, too! I can never get a good face-cleaning action shot...paws always get in the way!
Hope you have a good night!