20 point veriance broken meter?

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Puddensmom

Puddensmom

Member Since 2015
I am still having trouble with Pudden's bg. I thought it was the facy feast, but she has been on Sheba a week and is still getting high numbers sometimes. After eating she is in the 80s or 90s, but at random times in the day I get high numbers.

Today she was 87. She is suffering from loose stools lately, but I think that is from the food change.

After she had a loose stool I checked her again and got 141. I loaded another strip to make sure that was right and got 125. Waited 2 min and then got 120.

Is a 20 point difference in two minutes normal veriance? That seems like a lot to me. I changed the battery last week when I started getting these numbers, but it didn't help.

I fed her about 45 min ago and she is now 89.
 
All meters can vary by up to +/- 20%. So even if you take 2 readings from the same blood drop, you can get readings that are different. The numbers you got (141, 125 and 120) do fall within the 20% variance, so I would suggest your meter is fine. It's more something to be aware of than something to worry too much about - for the most part, we just take the readings we get as being accurate unless you get a reading that looks so far from what you're expecting that you really need to check again in case you got a bad test strip.
 
Is she maybe getting stressed about using the litter box with having loose stool? Or maybe getting some cramping that's sending her numbers a bit higher? I'm just thinking that if the higher reading was just after she used the litter box, the two could be linked. I would give her a few days, unless she goes even higher, to see if things settle. Keep testing - but I did have a little wobble once with Rosa after she was boarded at one of the local vets...she ran up into the 150s on occasion for the best part of a week but then settled back down just fine.
 
It could be the diarrhea, but Pudden doesn't really respond to illness or stress with high BG.
She has been sick several times since her remission and never went over 100. I took her to the vet last week when I got more numbers in the 130s and the vet said we will just wait and see. She thought the numbers were perfectly fine and didn't seem to understand why I was upset. Anyway, when I brought Pudden home she was 116. I laughed that she went down. She is a weird one :)

This all started on Black Friday. She had been sneezing the previous week, but it had stopped by the time I checked her and got the high numbers. I saw the ff post and switched her to sheba, but all that has done is give her diarrhea.

She started an antihistamine called chlorpheniramine at the end of October. Could that be the cause? She gives me beautiful numbers about an hour after eating, but once the insulin her body created for the food wares off she goes up into the 120-130s. I want to stop the antihistamine, but can't because of the damage her allergies do to her eyes.
 
Thank you for the lab information. I purchased new strips right around the time these new numbers started and I noticed relion prime has changed them. They no longer have the hole at the end that grabs the meter. They are much more reliable in that they always work unlike the old ones that would constantly malfunction. I am wondering however since these strips are different if they could calculate numbers differently.

What I mean is since there can be a 20% variance, could the old strips put her at 97, but the new strips calculate it at 120? With variance it could be the same number, but is read differently by these strips. Or is variance determined by the meter and has nothing to do with the strips?

I'm just trying to cover all angles here since this has been going on for two weeks with no changes either way. She is not stabilizing and going back down, but she is not coming out of remission either.
 
The 20% is make up of meter variance and strip variance. The strip variance includes strip to strip variance in the same lot of strips as well as for difference lots of strips.
If you use the same meter and strips form the same vial the error is a lot smaller than 20%. If you used strips from another vial , especially if they are from a different lot of strips then the error will be larger but smaller than 20%
 
I don't know whether this might help you but in the UK they changed the formula for Sheba food a few months ago. It caused major GI distress in my cats and I've seen reports here from other UK members whose cats also had problems with Sheba on this side of the water.

While it is true that any diet change may upset a cat's GI tract perhaps to be on the safe side it might be worth your posting about the (presumably US) Sheba food to see whether any other members have had any problems with it? (My civvie is now being treated with steroids for the GI inflammation she has developed after eating the UK new formulation of Sheba; wouldn't wish what she is going through at the moment on any cat.)


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