2/3 Tonka AMPS 200 - reduce shot?

Status
Not open for further replies.
jmalasiuk

jmalasiuk

Member Since 2014
Tonka is coming down from his rebound and is at 200 tis morning. I have to leave for work in 10 minutes and am nervous about giving him his full shot of 2.25 units since he dropped so far on 2.5 the other day, and I don't know how his body reacts to a full dose when starting from a somehwat lower level. Gave him 1.25 units instead. Does this seem safe/or overly cautious, or too much given the situation?

Thanks!
 
No dosing advice from mm. Since she got a half dose it will be interesting to see what she does with it.
 
Probably wind up high, since I gave him a reduced dose and then got nervous and put out a small amount of dry food for him to munch on too, just in case. I wish he'd stick to weekends for his drops. No consideration, this cat :)
 
Tonka's 2/2 condo

On days that you work, is there anyone (a neighbor/friend/relative) that can check in on Tonka?

What time do you shoot? Leave for work? Get home?

While I totally understand your decision this morning, you're right that dropping the dose that much as well as leaving down dry is going to probably send him back high again, and may be a setback in his progress. He's just starting to get better numbers so it'll be disappointing to see him going back up and have to kind of start over again.

Each time you change the dose, the "dose clock" gets reset....so if you're on the 9th cycle out of 10 and skip/reduce, you have to start all over again, so it's going to be important going forward to shoot the scheduled dose

You can leave his regular low carb food down (the majority of cats will go looking for food if their BG start to drop) or you could get an auto-feeder that will automatically open to offer him food when you program it to. Also, you can make "food-sicles" by adding water to canned food and freezing it in an ice cube tray. Most cats won't eat frozen food, but later on when it melts, it returns to "fresh" food. (some cats will eat it frozen though! You have to test this out to find out...lol)

Shooting only 1.25 this morning will drain his depot though, so hopefully you'll be able to shoot the 2.25 tonight and still get some sleep!
 
I have no-one around to check in on him regularly, which is why I'm so nervous about leaving him on a descent when I'm at work. I tend to leave for work shortly after 7 am, and tend to get home just before 7 pm, so there's not a lot of time to play with for before and after shots. I could force myself to get up earlier to test him earlier, but I'd have to try to make it home earlier in the evenings, and I'm already working shorter days now than I used to (long commute).

Other problem for anyone checking on him is that he doesn't show any signs when he's too low, other than wanting food, but that's not unusual for him either, so not the best indicator. Otherwise, I'd just pay my sitter to go in and check on him when on the days that I'm more worried.

I'm going to check with my cat sitter and see if she would be willing to try checking his sugars. She's reluctant, though, and I understand that: she wants to know that they won't be shy of her since she's the only one who looks after them when I'm working out of town - and they are shy with other people until said person proves their worthiness to them :) , so her "violating the trust issue" with Tonka and his paws/ear is a potential concern for all of us. Since she's not around them all the time like I am when I'm home, whatever goes on when she visits becomes what she is known for. Right now it's food and loving - throw paw poking into the mix, and they might get shy-er of her again.

I'm hoping very much that whatever was going on to make him need 2.5 units to come down to normal levels has, in fact, gotten out of his system and the 1.25 units will be a good spot for the day (he was dropping on less on a sporadic basis before). Doubtful, but I'm still hoping. The dry was probably overkill, but I'm a bit of a nervous wreck after he didn't bounce right away the other night. He's usually rebounding the second he approaches a good level, and he dropped fast this time.

I might try to food'sicles. They stop eating when they're full. Will the low carb be enough carb when he is dropping more extremely, if he eats soon enough? Teeger doesn't tend to stuff himself anymore, so Tonka would probably be safe with that option...
 
Shooting a smaller dose when you are nervous like today is fine. On the plus side, he only had a couple of cycles of bouncing which is good.

Getting an autofeeder is a good way to keep Tonka safe. I use the Petsafe 5. You can get it online or at Petsmart in Canada. We have another member who works long days like you, and what she does is test at +10.5 of the PM cycle (or whenever she gets up), then does the AM test and shot just as she goes out the door. If her cat is dropping into AMPS or the number is lower than she's comfortable with, she loads the autofeeder with high carb wet food. With the Petsafe, you have 4 spots you can fill, so you could set it to go off at +2, +3. +4 and +5, or whatever you think he needs. If the kitty looks like he's going to have a normal cycle, you can fill the autofeeder with regular low carb food. The Petsafe has a small spot under the tray where you can fit a small gel pack, which I do cause I feed raw food. If it's just plain canned food, you can add a little water to make it a bit soupier and that will prevent if from crusting over. Or you can add an ice cube on top which will melt, keep it cool and add water.

If you want to go the catsicle route, make some of low carb, medium carb and high carb and put out what you think he'll need.
 
I actually have an old autofeeder that is similar in style (Cat Mate) which I used if I had to be away for a day or two back when it was just me and Teeger. I've never tried to use it since Tonka came into our lives - didn't expect things to go well with two cats competing over the same food opening. But they seem to be grazing more than gobbling this past year, so it might be safe to try, especially if they've filled up on breakfast.

So it's better for the "insulin depot" to give the full dose and just feed more? (Assuming that he doesn't wind up needing a massive reduction for some other reason)

And, just in case I can't get any feedback before I have to run out the door some morning that he starts out even lower (I'm bad about getting up early enough to do any significantly earlier-than-just-before-injection-time tests: might help if I could ever get to bed earlier :rolleyes:) at what point (for a cat with Tonka's current patterns when I can't stick around to watch him) would the "don't shoot" level be? I've seen a lot of different numbers, and don't know what would be a good level for that, so I'd probably err on the side of caution and not inject or reduce his injection like today. As noted earlier, it might be entirely safe to inject him at 200, but I can't remember the last time we had a pre-shot level that low (relatively speaking) so I don't know how his body will react to it. Really wish he'd have the schedule this better, so I could just inject him with his current dose and watch to see what happens from there.
 
Oh, and he was only up to 26.2 (472) tonight at his shot time (gave 2.25 units), which is close to where he started last night. Of course, he was probably coming down off a rebound last night, so I imagine that's why he was closer to normal this morning, rather than back up into the pinks like he'll probably be by morning tomorrow if he's curving, eh?
 
jmalasiuk said:
at what point (for a cat with Tonka's current patterns when I can't stick around to watch him) would the "don't shoot" level be? I've seen a lot of different numbers, and don't know what would be a good level for that, so I'd probably err on the side of caution and not inject or reduce his injection like today.
Click to expand...
I find it hard to decide a "no shoot" number on just the preshot value. I also look at the cycle before to see what is happening. If you look at the night of Feb 1st (which you want to avoid again), during that day cycle he was breaking his bounce and his numbers came down all day. If you look at the night before, his preshot value was not that much higher, but during that day he'd had a curve and had gone down and then back up again. You also know that now he's taking a couple of cycles to rebound/bounce before he comes down and has a good cycle again, which was probably where he was this morning. And now that you did that smaller dose this morning, it'll take 4-6 cycles to refill the depot, which should also make him safer.

The other factor is the ability to put out high carb food. If you can leave him something to eat and bring himself up if he needs to, then you can lower that "no shoot" number. You are doing a good job at gathering data, his patterns will emerge which will help your decisions.
 
If only I could know that he'd only eat it if he actually needed it. He tends to eat whatever I put down for him, and will keep eating till it's gone. Some days he'll leave a bunch of food, but it's a rare day that he hasn't cleaned up everything by the end of the day (and he is eating a calorie dense food). But I froze some higher carb wet food tonight, so we'll see.
 
All you can do it test whether he'll eat when lowish at a time you are home. If you leave food out like you would when you are gone, and he goes to it when going lower then you know he'll do the right thing. I always feed Neko her mini meals out of her autofeeder, whether I'm home or not.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top