I’ve been helping on the PZ ISG and there are less people to help there. Deb has been doing most of it.
Do I think it’s a good fit for Marmy? As was said earlier, it depends on your goals but it also depends on what you’ve got going on yourself.
Because PZ is not a depot insulin like Levemir, there’s more flexibility to dosing. Yes.....consistency is best in dosing and shooting but if you had to shoot a reduced dose one cycle, you’ve no depot to worry about (although there is a little bit of action from one cycle to the next with PZ but it’s not depot action). It is not as gentle an insulin as Levemir and there as a lot of PZ users over the years who have moved to Lantus or Levemir.
To be really honest with you, I don’t think the insulin is the issue with Marmy. I do not mean this to be critical but just honest and that is that you aren’t using the insulin correctly. There are way too many really low numbers on her SS which concerns me. I’m glad you are testing earlier now. But, for example on 5/3, by +2, she was already headed down so that’s your signal to feed to control the drop and definitely test before two more hours have passed.
While some of Marmy’s lows might be attributable to carryover and overlap, I’m seeing clear clues that she’s clearing a bounce and dropping fast especially when she then onsets. That is definitely the case on 4/23 and 5/3. Are you studying her SS to see when she starts to clear a bounce so you are ready for it and can manage the curve with food? For cats that clear bounces like Marmy, I’ve found the best way to deal with them is to test early and often and feed higher LC food or even MC, if needed, to slow the numbers down so they never get to those low green numbers. Usually, if you do this for a few cycles and flatten them out, they stop the dive/bounce cycle but as long as she dives like that, she’s going to bounce, and then she’s going to dive.
Gracie would occasionally do this with me and when I saw a bounce clearing, I’d even test at +1 and start feeding to keep the numbers from plummeting because she could also dive.
As an aside, on her SS, it’s impossible to tell when you list multiple numbers in a cell, such as 4/23 +4 a.m. cycle, if you spread those tests out or if you retested three times back-to-back. If you got a 46 at +4, fed and then retested 15 minutes later, for example, and then fed and retested another 15 mins later, it should read 46; 36 @ +4.25; 39 @ +4.5. When they are all just listed, we have no idea how the food or carbs are affecting her numbers or if you just kept retesting one after another to see if the meter is readIgM correctly.
I hope this is helpful as a learning tool. Again, it’s not my intent to criticize what you have been doing but let you know how you can address it. If you don’t understand her cycles and her onset, nadir, duration and are able to pick up when she’s going to clear a bounce, then managing her better is going to be a challenge.
