4/30 Input? Foster kitty sprinting for the falls

[Melanie and Smokey]

I haven't set up condos on our foster Cecil because I didn't think I'd have time to post daily. I also figured we'd have a good month and at least one dose increase before he started coming back down. :lol: I don't know that we have got to sleep since he came and I have hardly made it to work! We spend much time testing and guiding with food to keep him from getting too low. When he gets into the 50s and 40s he does get very lethargic so we try to steer him up before he gets there.

I didn't want to drop his from 2 to 1, would have rather brought him down slower, but it seemed like that was our only shot at trying to get back to a regular shot schedule and not jumping his dose around in the evening. I don't want to bring him off of insulin too fast and risk remission not sticking. But he doesn't seem to want to go slow.

A little back history. He was at the shelter since mid-January. I am not sure when he was diagnosed, pretty close to intake. They tried food change first and that didn't work. He got VERY skinny. Beginning of April he started to look pretty tough and would just lay in the corner when I had him out to play. I started talking to the shelter manager about getting him into foster and found out he had quit eating, he was up to 5U 2X a day of Vetsulin and he was only being tested once a week at that point. They had changed his food to Core, but were feeding wet and dry, and had a meter on order. After we talked she got him switched to Lantus. We took him out to foster about a week after he started Lantus, a day or two after he was increased to 2U I believe. I noticed a pretty good drop in his first night after I had only feed him wet food the first evening so I discontinued all dry food.

So here we are trying to keep him out of the 40s every cycle while keeping him on insulin long enough to heal. He had very high numbers before the Lantus and he is definitely dry food sensitive. Though the night I karo'd him he only went from 62 to 63 in an hour. So I want to make sure we bring him off of insulin to his best benefit. My husband gets nervous on any number under 80 and wants to start stuffing treats and gravy into him. He's gained over a pound since we've got him. Which usually isn't bad for a diabetic cat, but he is actually getting fat. He is extremely food obsessed yet. CRAZY food obsessed.

Any thoughts at looking at his spreadsheet? Just let him run off to the falls as fast as he wants to go? Or hold on to the reigns and hope for sleep after this dance is over?

 

[Wendy&Neko]

Melanie, how sweet of you to foster the diabetic shelter kitty. :YMHUG: He really does seem to have his track shoes on and sprinting hard. Dry food really can make quite the difference. Linda's Scooter is an interesting example of 5.5U of Levemir to zero on no time. She took the rest of her cats off kibble the night of February 18th. Before that, she didn't think Scooter was getting into dry, but he must have been.

One thing I notice is that you are sometimes using the AlphaTrak meter. Jill posted a new document in the Tight Regulation Sticky called Management of Diabetic Cats with Long-acting Insulin - it's a new one by Roomp and Rand. In it, they suggest that the reduction point for an AlphaTrak is 68 (vs. 50 on a human blood calibrated meter). So if you go back to the AT, keep that number in mind.

I think I'd try to keep Cecil on insulin as long as you can like you have been, but I expect it won't be much longer. :lol: Yesterday you still had the 1.0 depot to deal with and maybe even the remnants of the 2.0U depot. With the skip last night, I hope you now can see what .75U will do for him.

 

[Melanie and Smokey]

Thanks for the link to Scooters chart. Looks so much like Cecil's pattern. Sounds like him too -food thief.

I only have the Alpha because that is what the shelter had and it is what their vet uses. So I was catching a couple tests on the Alpha to show the vet the comparisons to our Aviva. Due to lots of testing on cycles with 40s, bad eBay vendors, and hubby's not telling me until 10pm last night that he'd used all but one strip, we ran out of strips on our meter and had to use the Alpha this morning just to make sure he stayed up when we started to shoot insulin again. Got 2 boxes of strips in the mail today and 2 more are supposed to come soon so hopefully that lasts us a little bit! I don't like switching meters though the higher numbers from the Alpha seem a little easier for the husband to deal with.

I HATE skipping, but I was hoping that skip would drain some shed and flatten us out. This morning looked promising, but tonight we are back to 60 1hr after shot.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

I think you're going to have to keep doing what you're doing -- following your instincts. In many ways, when you've got a kitty on a mission, it's harder to deal with the dosing than a kitty who hasn't found his "good" dose. You're doing a great job.