5/31 Pumbaa AMPS/362 +4/123 +6.5/97 +7.5/113

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Pumbaa

Pumbaa

Member Since 2012
Big dive so far today, but I am thankful that Pumbaa didn't go up into the blacks or reds overnight after his wonderful yellows and blues yesterday.

He was exceedingly active this morning, waking me up before 5 am, tearing across the bed, stopping to bite my shoulder to wake me up, chattering at me to get up and start the day. We played "chase the hand under the sheets" for a bit, but then he was off zooming around the house.

His shot time isn't until 6:15, so he sat, impatiently, on the feeding table while I fed the drooler and watered some vegetation outside. Pumbaa and Larry had barely touched their overnight food, so Pumbaa must have been hungry this morning. He's been eating a lot today...at least he's smart enough to know when to eat voraciously. I'm encouraging the eating so he doesn't dive down to unsafe BG levels. I'd rather he hoovers up lots of lo-carb food rather than having to give him gravy-food or honey.

I don't know how you all deal with getting out of bed and testing late at night, but what I did last night was allow myself to sleep on the couch from 10 pm to midnight, then wake up to my cell phone alarm at +6 to test him. Since he was on the rise last night, I was able to go to bed without worrying about him. Of course I couldn't go right back to sleep, but I am much more able to function working days again than I was working nights.

Suze
 
GO PUMBAA GO!!!! I told u those greens and blues would look wonderful!! Big dive eh? Heres crossing my fingers that he doesnt bounce...or at least not too high from this one!!

Awesome day!!
 
dancing_cat dancing_cat :dizcat dancing_cat dancing_cat flip_cat dancing_cat dancing_cat

Just wanted to add in the smilies as well! I couldn't before from my phone and heck, Pumbaa deserves it!

Yeah I totally couldn't do the night time testing either. There were a couple of nights that I was worried so I'd set my alarm for 1am. Problem was that I would be so nervous about forgetting to wake up that I couldn't fall asleep...and then after testing him (and he would always bounce those times, making me mad that I was awake and worried for nothing lol) I couldn't fall asleep --- ahhh! I admire people when I look at their SS and they have all this nighttime testing....I just plain sucked at it. Luckily Kit didn't throw us any curve balls. It took us a couple of weeks to find out that he had a late nadir so we couldn't worry when we saw a low PMPS because he would rise for a good 5 hours after that. But until we knew that...man we were always nervous.

Hope things are going well!
 
Chip is about a month behind Pumbaa and surfing a slightly flatter version of the same colors today. :smile:

I won't be unhappy not to dive into the greens after our big green nightmare on day 4.

I'd be just fine hanging in the blues and yellows for some liver training. @-)

Pumbaa said:
...I don't know how you all deal with getting out of bed and testing late at night, but what I did last night was allow myself to sleep on the couch from 10 pm to midnight, then wake up to my cell phone alarm at +6 to test him. Since he was on the rise last night, I was able to go to bed without worrying about him. Of course I couldn't go right back to sleep, but I am much more able to function working days again than I was working nights.

Suze
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It means staying up all night and then catnapping to survive. I don't see how a vet could expect someone to do this as treatment. I thought this would be 3 tests a day and a curve on the weekend. No way that seems safe with Lantus so far. As it turns out Pumbaa could have gotten away with it (so far) since he just flirts with green briefly. But if you weren't testing day and night you'd never know for sure.

Just in this for the best chance at OTJ. Don't think I could survive it for 5 months let alone 5 years. We'll have to start a contest to see who goes OTJ first. Bandit and Scooter make it look so easy. Actually it wasn't always so easy for Scooter, but you know if they can do it perhaps we can too. :cool:
 
Dale:

I, too, would be just fine hanging out in the blues and yellows for a couple of weeks! Catch up on my sleep...and my chores...maybe color my hair and hide the gray...shave my legs...you know, normal stuff. *LOL* That is so true about Pumbaa just flirting with green so far, and how I wouldn't know this if I wasn't testing regularly. He is such a bouncer/diver! I love the SSs where the kitties stay in blue and green forever with nary a yellow or pink to mar the charts.

How long was Chip on the Humilin before you switched him to Lantus? Nothing like being initiated to a green nightmare early on. Now you're a pro, and I have yet to experience the "is he going hypo/quick feed him honey and hi-carb food" nightmare, thankfully. But I'm ready! And looking forward to the dose reductions instead of dose increases! No matter how little sleep I get. :)

Pumbaa and I accept your OTJ challenge. :) But just so you know, I went off the tight regulation because it was too stressful to both Pumbaa and myself. I think he's done better with me waiting patiently for him to settle into a dose, instead of doing the tight regulation increases. We got to the same point, just a little slower and with less negative reactions from Pumbaa's body. It makes me so happy to see him being his old feisty juvenile delinquent self! Even if that means his biting me on the shoulder at 4:50 am to wake me up, when I was up at midnight to test him. *LOL*

You have a great sense of humor, Dale! That is so important dealing with FD. As is being patient. I'm 55, and have sworn my entire life that I was born without the patience gene, but this sure has taught me patience, which is now carrying over to other things in my life. This FD has also taught me that, even though you collect data, you may not be able to make sense of it. I'm such a "do research/analyze data" person, that Pumbaa has thrown me for a loop. Every time I predict how his body will respond to the insulin/food/etc., he reads my mind and does the opposite! *LOL*

Suze
 
Mel and Lil:

Thank you SO much for cheering Pumbaa on! It means a lot to us! And especially you, Mel, dealing with Musette, and Autumn, and the upcoming anniversary of Muse's passing to heaven. :YMHUG:

Suze
 
Looks like Pumbaa is smoothing down inching up the dose. :cool:

Pumbaa said:
...How long was Chip on the Humilin before you switched him to Lantus? Nothing like being initiated to a green nightmare early on. Now you're a pro, and I have yet to experience the "is he going hypo/quick feed him honey and hi-carb food" nightmare, thankfully. But I'm ready! And looking forward to the dose reductions instead of dose increases! No matter how little sleep I get. :)
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He was on N for slightly over a year, however not more than 10 weeks at a time with regular doses. He was on 10 weeks initially under the vets care using prescription dry food. Seemed to be a full recovery and remission. However the vet issued stern instructions to keep him on the dry prescription food, to avoid needing insulin. Wrong. That only lasted 2 months before he had to go back on Humulin. Of course with no testing besides fructosamine it's hard to tell if he ever should have been off, but clinical signs were excellent. He had few symptoms until the week after he resumed N. He lost 2 pounds that first week back on, that's when I panicked and found this place.

Once I started home testing, I saw he was going nearly hypo with every shot. I backed him down to next to nothing over the course of 2 weeks. During the same time I switched to FF classics wet. After that he was pretty much diet controlled most of the winter, his pancreas kept him down with a few whiffs of humulin here and there if he was creeping back up much over 100.

Come spring he went over 200 so I started a regular dose of N again (for 10 weeks) but seemed to get caught up in a bounce loop complete with returning neuropathy. That brings us up to now and Lantus.

Pumbaa said:
...Pumbaa and I accept your OTJ challenge. :) But just so you know, I went off the tight regulation because it was too stressful to both Pumbaa and myself. I think he's done better with me waiting patiently for him to settle into a dose, instead of doing the tight regulation increases. We got to the same point, just a little slower and with less negative reactions from Pumbaa's body. It makes me so happy to see him being his old feisty juvenile delinquent self! Even if that means his biting me on the shoulder at 4:50 am to wake me up, when I was up at midnight to test him. *LOL*
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I'd like to know what protocol Julia and Bandit used since it seemed stable and safe. She never really went over 1 unit bid and eventually the bouncing cleared with nary a hypo scare.

I'm still looking around for a safe *sustainable* protocol. nailbite_smile


Pumbaa said:
...This FD has also taught me that, even though you collect data, you may not be able to make sense of it. I'm such a "do research/analyze data" person, that Pumbaa has thrown me for a loop. Every time I predict how his body will respond to the insulin/food/etc., he reads my mind and does the opposite! *LOL*

Suze
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That's Lantus... apparently oscillating bounces vacillating over the cumulative imprint of our last 6 or so depots. So the nadir is not so clear. But after just a week on Lantus I'm also noticing improving clinical signs.

As long as it's helping we do whatever it takes. :smile:
 
Dale, I jinxed myself by writing on his SS how pleased I was with his numbers this morning. He's back in the pink as of +6 today. *LMAO*
 
Don't feel too bad. Chip is surfing flat pink again today. Guess it must be the hangover from those better numbers.

Looks like we have MamaDale and PapaDale (his and hers) going on here. ;-)
 
MamaDale here. Yep, we do, PapaDale. When I was in school, everyone called my roommate Chip after we went to a Halloween party dressed as Chip and Dale. I don't think she expected that to stick. Well, Emma is trying very hard to ruin my ability to use the computer right now. We got home late from taking Daddy to the airport, and she's wide awake. Gotta fix that.

Suze, sorry Pumbaa bounced. So did Max, and he's still up there in the 300s. I hate to do it. I think it will be a lot of unnecessary poking, but I'm just going to test, test, test, get as much data as I can. Hopefully someone here will be able to help me make sense of it. Its really getting ridiculous that I can't even make any decisions about his dose because he won't stop bouncing. That must mean something, and I'm afraid it means drop down to 1 unit and start over. If not, it means something scarier. Maybe my experience and whatever I can figure out from it will shorten the time your cat bounces. Let's hope so.
 
max&emmasmommie said:
I think it will be a lot of unnecessary poking, but I'm just going to test, test, test, get as much data as I can. Hopefully someone here will be able to help me make sense of it. Its really getting ridiculous that I can't even make any decisions about his dose because he won't stop bouncing. That must mean something, and I'm afraid it means drop down to 1 unit and start over. If not, it means something scarier.
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Dale:

Poking is never unnecessary, especially with cats like ours who are all over the place. Something is causing those bounces, and until you test, test, test, you won't know what. And trust me, if you can turn the testing time into a positive experience with Max, like bribing him with high-quality, high-protein treats during the test to pre-occupy him, testing won't be such an ordeal, for either of you. Pumbaa sits on my lap now and purrs during testing. Or, if not purring, just resigns himself to the fact that I'm going to poke him again. In all the testing I've done, he's only been agitated once, and he must not have been feeling good that day.

Here's a question for you...sometimes on Max's SS it says "No" for the units. Are those missed shots? 'Cause every time there is a "No" in the AM cycle column, Max had a really high pre-shot number in the evening.

Personally, I wouldn't feel comfortable shooting 2.75U without doing a lot more testing and finding out how low Max is going to cause those high numbers. But that's me. I'm overly paranoid about Pumbaa dropping down to a dangerous level without my knowing about it. Even if you just do a +3/+6/+9 during the day, plus a test before you go to bed at night (as well as the AM and PM preshot tests) that will give you a much better idea of how he's reacting to the insulin.

I see you have him on Miralax every day now for the constipation. Hopefully that is going to help his number stabilize, as will giving shots consistently in the flanks, rather than scruff and flank. You might want to try adding some extra virgin olive oil to his food...just a bit...as that seems to have helped my cats with the fur balls and regularity.

As for dropping the dose way down and starting over, well, I did that with Pumbaa, and I'm glad I did because he and I restarted with less stress. I went against everyone's advice to do this, and I shouldn't recommend anyone else doing it, but if you are going to start testing regularly, and his constipation is now controlled, and you look back on his SS around 3/19 when he was getting 2.0U, he had some great numbers at that dose. I'm just sayin'... :)

As for the high numbers being caused by something scarier...he had a beautiful 95 and a 140 just a few days ago. So I think the only scary thing right now is the lack of data, especially if the 95 was after a scruff shot, and you don't know what was happening at night after the flank shots.

(((HUGS))) I know how frustrating this is trying to figure the kitties out. Don't forget to get that dry erase board to track his test results until you have time to enter them in his SS.

Suze
 
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