3/16 Oren; amps-399;+10-369 noPMPS due to vet visit

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back from vet. big improvement over last guy! short story; did a urinalysis and CBC (right in house, no sending out to lab like old place). Thought his gum color was a little weird; on the blueish side? but didn't seem overly worried... No UTI, slightly elevated white blood cells, so maybe some inflammation? His BG was +4, so she approved the increase to 3.5U tonight, shaved two small areas on his sides to help me w/ the shots and demonstrated her shot technique (not using syringe). heart and lungs and thyroid good (no inflammation of thyroid). No sign of keytones.
Suggested i get glucose/keytone strips, not just the plain keytone strips i have? I'm a bit confused by that, I thought urine glucose was different test? Some of the end of the visit got a bit hurried as i was last client of the day..

She's aware of the FDMB site, has a client following the protocol. Even says she has an old alpha trak meter she will give me! has to find it though and she is going on vacation rest of this week. His weight was 8.54lb which she says is good. I tested him before going to vet at about +10 and he was 369. She seems to think I should just keep him at 3.5 for 3 days(through Thur) and test him Fri. am. "Give him a little break", unless of course he's not eating or something. I think she's somewhat skeptical of the human meters. I didn't pre-shot him tonight cause I'm sure he'd be high after the vet stress. I feel relieved that the keytones don't seem to be an issue. Clinically he definitely isn't showing any of the warning signs.
 
The problem with the Alpha Trak is that although she might give you the meter, the strips you'll need to continue using it are an average of $1 each! For someone testing only 4 times/day, that's $120 a month just in test strips!

There are meters that measure both blood glucose and blood keytones, but again, the strips are outrageous. The nice thing about them is that IF your cat is prone to keytones, they show up much sooner in the blood than they do in the urine, so you can start treating it sooner, but as long as you're routinely checking for urine keytones and jump right on them if you get anything above "trace", you should be fine.

We hear that "human meters don't work for cats" story a lot around here, but you can see how many of us use them, so they must be accurate enough or we'd all have much sicker kitties!

ALL meters have a 20% variance too, so there's really no such thing as a perfect BG meter....it's just important that you see how far each dose is taking them and adjust from there
 
Chris & China said:
ALL meters have a 20% variance too, so there's really no such thing as a perfect BG meter....it's just important that you see how far each dose is taking them and adjust from there
Click to expand...

I asked my vet about the Alpha Trak and she basically said the same thing. All meters have variance, and she didn't think that the Alpha Trak would be any more accurate than the Relion Micro I have been using.
 
I wonder if she was implying that you use ONLY urine test strips for both ketones and glucose?

If that's what she was telling you, then I wouldn't do it. Using a meter for blood glucose is much more specific than using the test strips that tell you how much glucose is in their urine

Most of us just use the regular human meter (like the Confirm) for blood glucose testing and urine ketone strips for watching for ketones...Like the Relion Ketone test strips
 
Those strips would work for both urine glucose and ketone tests - but the reason we use blood testing for glucose is because it is more timely. By the time you're measuring glucose in urine, it's several hours old. I'd stick to blood glucose testing and use whatever urine ketone test strips you want to use.

glad you like this vet!

i'm curious that there were no signs of ketones at the vet's. Did you ever check your strips on yourself? The reason i'm mentioning that is because they are fairly picky to use - you have to be accurate in the length of time that you wait to check the color, for example. I'm sure you don't have ketones, and checking on yourself would let you see what negative on your own strips looks like.

Personally, as high as he is, I'd want to increase every 4 cycles until he's out of blacks and red numbers. Usually people do hold a dose at least 3 days (6 cycles), but when there are ketones involved, or a cat is nonstop in high numbers, that's when we suggest the more aggressive 4 cycles and increase plan.
 
no, she is a fan of home bg testing; at least she said that, but I think she said i should also use the dual urine glucose/keytone strips. as for the strips I'm using, no i haven't tried on myself, but since I started using them, i felt fairly sure about the first several being negative. these last few days seemed to inch up to trace, but honestly the colors are not easy to tell. the strips claim needing only 15 seconds, but after they dry completely the color is pretty different. I should go ahead and try on on myself I suppose. Thankfully today, i saw only pink (though I'd bet the pre-shot tonight would have been high due to his vet visit)
 
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