Re: 3/29 Mr. Grey AMPS 75 +1 83 +2 61+3 66 +3.5 75 +4 76
Rick, Mr. Grey is having another great day today. Looking good! Good job on the HC early in the cycle. When Neko is going low early, I just give her 1 tsp of HC. I think of it as applying light pressure on the brakes. But it depends how carb sensitive your cat is on how much HC you have to feed.
My vet originally thought I was wasting my money on the blood test, but she humored me because it's what I wanted to do. She thought Neko's dose was too low and it was too soon to do the test. She was at 7.5 units at the time of the blood draw. Needless to say, the vet was way more surprised than I was when the test results came back positive for IAA and acro. My vet has since recognized she has another acro cat in her practice.
To confirm Neko's acromegaly, she had a CT scan at Colorado State University to actually see the tumor. An MRI would do the same. The IGF-1 blood test does not 100% confirm the acro diagnosis, but if there was a positive result from the blood test, combined with Mr. Grey's dose, there would be a very strong indication of acromegaly. And the blood test is much cheaper. I wanted to be very sure that Neko had acromegaly before I drove a couple thousand miles each way to CSU with the cat in the car, so I had a discussion with the experts at CSU before proceeding. They thought that the positive acro blood test plus Neko's SS was enough indication she was acro. Bottom line, a blood test should be enough to get the answer you need.