4-23-18 Gizmo F AMPS 402, PMPS 392 +2.5 303 +5 313

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tobakett

tobakett

Member Since 2018
Ugh, last night was so good, pmps was 203 and +6 was 206 and when I laid down I just passed out. I woke up around 3am and Gizmo was all snuggled in next to me and purring and I just did not have the energy or will to get him up and stick him again when we had to be up in 3 hours.

Now his amps is 402 which is red on the spreadsheet so I'm worried that's bad and something awful is going to happen. I'm gonna get my spreadsheet added to my signature as soon as I am at work at a normal computer but now I know I'm going to be a wreck all day. We have workmen coming to the house, so I have to have him corralled in the large bathroom which he isn't keen on and neither bf or I can miss anymore work.

I've barely slept in the last week and now I'm beating myself up for sleeping last night. What do the different colors mean on the spreadsheet? I know it might just be bounce but this is killing me. I hate not being able to just fix this. I hate leaving for work worried I'm going to come home to something awful :(
 
Spread sheet added. It wouldn't let me make a pretty hyperlink so I had to delete my other cats info to make room. She's not diabetic so probably irrelevant. At work now and can't eat, I feel sick and am terrified. I don't understand what "okay" ranges are (other than 68 means I have to take him into the ER immedietly, I think, I feel like the more I read the more I confuse myself) so I have no idea if red means I just left him home to suffer some terrible fate or if this is normal bounce.

I'm really starting to doubt myself and my ability to do this. The vet made it sound so simple and I can't figure out if I'm just inept or what.
 
Hey there, and welcome to Lantus and Lev support group. First off, breathe! We all have been there with being a wreck after our kitties have been diagnosed. First, Gizmo is safe in higher numbers while you are at work and are better than being too low and not being there with him.

It does look he is bouncing from being in those lower yellow numbers last night. It is a normal response that happens when their bodies go lower than they are used to being or if they drop fast in numbers. A bounce can take up to 6 cycles or 3 days to clear. So, please eat and try not to worry. What goes up, comes down.

If Gizmo goes below 68, that is the "take action " number while using a AT2 meter. You want to get some Medium Carb (MC) food which are 11% -15% and some Higher Carb (HC) which are 16% - 24% so that if he does drop too low you can steer him back up.

Knowledge is power and I know it is all so confusing at first, but we are here to help you and just keep reading all the stickies at the top of this forum and keep posting and asking questions as that is how we all learned.

Give yourself some credit! You have learned how to shoot insulin, test him and get a SS up and going and find a forum that can help you. :) You can do this.
 
Is there an upper number that is an emergency number? I think seeing red is maybe what put me into panic mode since I work in a human clinic (call center - not medically trained myself) and for us a red call = we need a medical team member on the line ASAP because we need to asses if someone is in danger of dying.

I was really hoping he would be one of those smooth right into remission cases but I get the sinking feeling we might be in for a bumpy ride. He was so angry at me this morning, which is a bummer because he was such a sweetie in the early hours of this morning. I just want work to be over so I can get home and see him and run his numbers and know hes okay.
 
Hello and welcome. Make sure to take a look at the yellow starred Sticky Notes in this forum.Those high numbers are ugly, but quite common at the beginning of a cat's diabetes journey. You just don't want prolonged highs. I would test daily for ketones while Gizmo is in higher numbers. Gizmo is doing what we call bouncing, because his body has gotten used to higher numbers. Can you tell us a little about what led up to him being diagnosed as diabetic? Any other issued present?

For reference, my Neko used to hit "Hi" or over 600 on a human meter fairly often in the beginning. She lived five years as a diabetic and had other complications.

The sooner you can get a cat into normal blood sugar numbers, the higher the chance of remission. Is ere a particular reason you chose to follow SLGS?
 
Hello @tobakett !

First of all, welcome here! I'm a new member too, and I can tell you that we get a LOT of help and advice, so don't worry, you will learn how to deal with diabetes.

Your Gizmo will be alright in the red for today. At first, when I started testing everyday, my Nam-kha was often in the "red", but I adjusted her dose and gave her more and more wet food. Now she has pretty good numbers.

The "dangerous" zone is when you cat is in the "lime", but if you look at Nam-kha's SS, she has been there several times. I helped her each time to go back up in the normal zone. Being in the red for too long is also dangerous, but I think it is a problem when it lasts for days/weeks.

You'll see, your kitty is going to get used to all that, the testing, the new food, insulins shots... Mine is doing very well now, she knows that she's getting better thanks to the shots.

Good luck and try not to worry too much today.
 
@Wendy&Neko

A couple of reasons I went with SLGS (and i apologize in advance, I'm an over-analytical type person so I always overthink and over-word things):

1) It more closely follows what the vet was telling me to do and since I know nothing I'm scared to not listen to the person who spent years in medical school. Even gearing up to argue taking him off the prescrption diet I was in tears argusing my case to her. As soon as she heard he didn't like it she backed off.
2) I don't really understand the TR. I have read the stickies, I have read every one of the stickies several times and I feel like the more I read them, the more confused/overwhelmed I get and the more I panic that I am unable to do this and am going to end up hurting him. Right now I am so angry at my vet because she made this all sound like it was easy and no big deal but I feel helpless.
3)I have a pet meter. The day he was diagnosed, the vet told me I had to buy that meter, not a human meter and I had not even found this site yet and I can't afford to go buy another meter right now but the TR says you have to use a human one (or rather "strongly discourages" which might as well be the same thing) I f
4) I am out of the house from 7am to 6pm every day as my boyfriend and I have to carpool for work as we only have 1 car and no other support systems. We don't have friends we can trust to come in and help. Twice a month I have to leave at 6:30am for work. My understanding is TR requires a lot more curve testing which I can not do. I only get a half hour lunch, I live a half hour away from work so I don't have the option to go home during the workday on lunch.
5)I can't take a day off work to do the initial 3 days of watching closely for several weeks as the clinic I work in severly short staffed so I only have off Saturday and SUnday.
6) I cant afford a high quality low carb food exclusivly or raw. Getting them off prescription and doing a mix of BFF/Friskies is about the most my budget can muster at the moment. And given the fact that before all of this I didn't have the time to even take care of myself, trying to suddenly learn to make my own cat food is not realistic either.
7) Being gone all day, I cant feed several small meals throughout the day when I am not there to supervise. And I can't afford an automatic feeder (and with 2 cats I have no way to control or see who is eating what) and seperating them is not an option because anytime I have tried seperating them for food or feeding them different they both go off food in protest, not to mention Gizmo literally destorys things, like clawing up doors and carpeting, and we rent.
8) I don't know what my cat's ideal weight is, so, no idea on starting dose (but at the least it would be MUCH higher than what the vet told me to give him since his ideal weight has got to be more than 4 lbs- she has him on 1 unit twice per day). I have asked my vet a few times and she has said it could vary based on the cat which is probably how we got in this mess in the first place - if I had a better idea of the expectations about his weight I might have caught some of this sooner.

As far as how we got here? It was a regular check up. A year ago, he got constipated from a hairball (as he has a bad habit of grooming himself and his civvie sister while she is a little princess and does nothing) and as he had been vomiting for 2 days I took him in to see if he needed vet help with getting unblocked. They ran an xray, gave him an anti-nausea and an enema, and sent us on our way. He took a massive poop, and live seemed good. Except the vet called and said she noticed some tiny stones in his bladder and kidneys. We ran blood and urine, no crystals, blood work was good, but vet told me to put him on Royal Canin Urinary SO moderate calorie since otherwise those stones would grow and kill him and that he needed to lose weight. When I asked how much to feed him they said "just follow whats on the bag". about 2 weeks ago, after I finally moved out of my ex-husbands house and got the cats out of there, I decided to take them in for a check up, and had not thought much of the only symptoms he had - weight loss, drinking a lot, and peeing a lot, since he was supposed to lose weight, early on when I asked the vet about peeing they said the food was supposed to make them pee a lot and he has ALWAYS loved his water fountain, even as a kitten. So when the vet was concerned about his weight loss they were like "Oh yeah we know it doesn't make sense, we tell you we want them to lose weight but then we get worried when they lose weight" and just ran blood and urine again. Once again, urine has no crystals, and blood work was fine except for a BG that was in the high 300s (I cant remember the number exactly, i think it was like 368) which vet said means he is diabetic. He lost about 4lbs in the last year.

So now we are here. No other symptoms, he's been his normal self. No behaviors changes, his coat is still shiny and healthy, no issues jumping and tearing around the house. Still super affectionate. Most of the time he is pretty chill, but he lets you know when he has had enough by simply giving a deep growl, but not a biter or scratcher.
 
PMPS 392. He was rather pissed when I got home today but wasnt acting weird. Growled at me before the shot which was a first, but I think it's because he was grumpy and wanted food, Josh (bf) was trying to be helpful and pulled out the cans and cleaned the bowls before the shot to help me but it caught their attention and I think it made him impatient.

Thinking I may try and do a +2 and then a +4, maybe +4.5, giving them bedtime meal after the later one, assuming they clean their plates this meal. Eating right now and Gizmo is wolfing it down so I don't see any reason why they won't.
 
Thanks for your explanations. First, as long as you are feeding low carb wet food or raw, that is fine. I had to worry about phosphorus content, so that limited my choices. I mostly fed raw and I found homemade raw was cheaper per day than canned. But that was my choice, many people here feed Friskies. Since he had stones in the past, you do want him well hydrated. Add a bit of water to his foodmif he's not drinking. The change to the diabetic diet helped my second kitty who had had crystals in the past.

We have a few people here using pet meters, mostly because their vet suggested it, even if they don't pay for the strips. A lot switch to human meters because the costs are so much less. Back in the day, we had less people here using ATs, so the data and experience we have here is mostly with human meters. My vet suggested a human meter, cause that's what she used. However, feel free to continue using the AT for now. The main difference is that our "take action" number where we feed high carb food is 68 on the AT, vs 50 on the human meter. It's also the reduction earned number if using TR. We have no way to translate AT numbers to human numbers, so we otherwise just use the same numbers on both meters when making dosing decisions. SLGS also says to use a human meter.

Starting dose if using SLGS and feeding low carb wet is 0.5 units, 1.0 unit if feeding dry or high carb wet. With TR, dose is determined by weigh in kilograms, not pounds. There are 2.2 lbs per kilogram, somamone unit dose is appropriate for a 9'lb cat. By the way, Good explanation on why using SLGS. TR can get them more quickly into regulation, which is a requirement for remission, but it's still possible with SLGS. And safety is number one.

The first while it is completely normal to be overwhelmed. We all remember what that was like and are willing to help.:bighug:
 
Meant to test at +2 but our neighbor came over with flowers to welcome us to the neighborhood so I tested at +2.5. He's down to 303. I'm not sure how to mark that on the spreadsheet so I just winged it but it's not changing color. Going to make my human dinner and eat and try to relax a little then test him again, probably somewhere between +4 and +5 and then give him his bedtime meal.

I think I'm gonna ask my boyfriend to read over everything when he has the time. Since he is relatively new to Gizmos life (has been in our lives for 4 years but only super close to Gizmo for the last 2ish) and he's a lot less emotional I feel it might be beneficial to have him learn. Plus his whole career kinda revolves around reading technical stuff and then being able to communicate it to multiple audiences, so I should hope he will be able to help translate things to "freaking out Gen-ish"

Thanks everyone. It's really hard when I'm so ridiculously isolated in real life so pretty much everything I go through I just shoulder on my own. Having voices of reason here has been a godsend. I really want to hope that this will just be a temporary way of life and that between Lantus and getting him switched to all wet and low carb eventually he will regulate and get otj.
 
For the spreadsheet, you can enter something like 303@2.5, however, you will have to use the paint bucket icon to manually add the colour.

Good luck with the BF training. Have a second person on the Feline diabetes team is a good idea.

I forgot to add last time, I like hearing that Gizmo is feeling good. Knowing how the cat is acting/feeling is as important as his numbers.
 
Oh hes really feeling good...he climbed up the back of a recliner, launched himself about 4 feet to get onto a table and then dug into a box of misc pet supplies to find a bag of temptations treats that were in there. Luckily we were in the next room and heard the thump of him launching himself off the back of the recliner and caught him just as he was jumping off the table with the sealed bag in mouth...

...how in the heck he found those is beyond me. They were sealed, so I doubt he could smell them, and it was a bag my mother had bought them as a xmas present that just got thrown in a packing box. Either this cat saw me pack that months ago and has the mind of an elephant or he is getting REALLY bored.

Regardless, I put the order in with chewy for those freeze dried carb free treats tonight before this cat decides to learn how to use the oven and make himself a pizza :P
 
+5 was 313. He fought me pretty hard and we screwed up the first strip and had to do a second so that might have elevated him a little. Either way, gonna try and not think about it and just sleep.

He seems to be getting more difficult with time with the blood testing :( His ears don't look so happy but his paws are out of the question, he HATES his paws being touched, it took months to get him to not try and murder me for claw trimmings, I feel all that would get undone and worse.
 
Are you putting Neosporin on his ears after the poke? And holding the poke spot for 10-15 seconds after can help prevent bruising.
 
I have not gotten neosporin yet, is it safe to use if they tend to groom themselves a lot? I worry about him wiping it with his paw then licking it since he is a fastidious groomer. I try to hold it, at first I did but now he just bolts the second he gets a chance. I feel like a lot of his numbers might be elevated just because every reading the last 24 hours has been difficult. I make sure to give him encouragement, stay calm, warm up his ear and afterwards he either gets food or brushing (which he loves). I do not use the little shooter thing that came with the kit, that just seemed way too big and bulky.
 
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