Hi Joyce,
I found this at the bottom of another older thread you'd posted on, but figured responding here made more sense.
I am so disheartened to see him over 300 at pre shot again today. I want to know what I can do to get him to STAY in yellow numbers and never go beyond them at pre shot tests. Then of course, blue and green and then OTJ! I really am sad every single time I see the pre shots above 300 because I worry about organ damage. His ketones have been negative so far...but it is only a matter of time I suspect. He seems to make a little noise when he jumps now...like his back legs hurt. Ugh! I am worried about neuropathy big time.
First on ketones- don't feel like it's "only a matter of time". Some cats never show ketones. They aren't due just to higher BG numbers. It is usually a combination of things.
Insufficient insulin, insufficient food intake and some sort of infection going on are the three "ingredients" in almost every case. Bob was diagnosed with "DKA" but that was right at the beginning, before he started getting insulin. He wasn't eating, he was severely dehydrated, and while they never specifically determined if any infection was in place, there probably was. He was literally dying. It took three days of ER care, but he survived. But he never showed any trace of ketones again after that.
In other words, don't let pink preshots scare you. It's a good idea to check for ketones, because it's something best caught early. But pink preshots, by themselves, aren't likely to cause them to appear.
Now about those pink numbers. If these are just "bounces" from seeing green nadirs, then they are not a problem. They just happen until he gets used to green numbers again. Remember, he spent his whole life in green numbers before he got diabetes. He will relearn "normal" at some point. Bob was giving me pink numbers too. And three weeks later he went OTJ. They're just numbers on a spreadsheet.
While Bob never had neuropathy, he did suffer from low potassium which caused a great deal of muscle weakness. He couldn't jump or climb up onto the furniture for a long time. It wasn't until a few weeks after he went OTJ that he was able to jump up on the bed. That was really the day I first felt "okay, he really is 'all better'".
Do you know if Simon's potassium has ever been tested to see if it's in the normal range?
Hang in there ;-)