6/23 Meadow's PMPS 178 Question about curves!

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Meadow

Meadow

Member Since 2010
Hi Folks,

AMPS 287
+3 346
+5 305
+7 256

I can't wait until my nutty schedule is over on Friday. I wasn't home to be able to break Meadow's breakfast up into a couple of hours, so she ate a whole can of FF at 7am. Wasn't able to test her again until 3 hours later. Looks like the inevitable food spike. It seems to me that every time Meadow has a green number, she rebounds and remains high through another cycle. Am I interpreting that correctly from her SS?

A point of interest.....a friend of mine has a diabetic kitty in the hospital right now due to a heart issue. He isn't eating and it's throwing off his insulin/bg managment. Steph asked to take Blackjack home figuring he would eat for her and she could do the curves at home. The internist said home curves done by ear prick are not accurate because the blood from the ear doesn't give "the whole body picture". She said the readings can be very skewed to the high or low side at any given time. Steph didn't ask any more about the whys and hows of the doctors statement. Has ayone heard that before about the home curves? Do any of you take your cats in to the vet for a 12 or 24 hour curve periodically just to check things?

Yesterday's condo: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=17909
 
Re: 6/23 Meadow's AMPS 287 +7 256 Question about curves!

hi Dottie,
just some thoughts on your friend's experience

Curve at vets? Nope. Not necessary.
It's just as good at home, besides some if not most kitties will spike up their BG's at the vets due to vet stress.

Also, vets tend to prefer you give them the business of vet curves, and not all vets are convinced yet that home testing is ok.

Alot of us here do go in for the odd check up or somethings off, or just to wave a spreadsheet at the vets, and most vets will tell you you dont have to test so much, your tormenting your cat etc...and then you get the vets who are in awe of your dedication and you impress the heck of them. :razz:
 
Re: 6/23 Meadow's AMPS 287 +7 256 Question about curves!


That's pretty much my feeling on the statement made to my friend. My vet was very impressed that I was doing home testing and he gives me the go ahead to pretty much handle her care myself. I'm seeing him tomorrow with some foster cats, so I am going to ask him about the validity of the tests.

Ronnie & Luna said:
hi Dottie,
just some thoughts on your friend's experience

Curve at vets? Nope. Not necessary.
It's just as good at home, besides some if not most kitties will spike up their BG's at the vets due to vet stress.

Also, vets tend to prefer you give them the business of vet curves, and not all vets are convinced yet that home testing is ok.

Alot of us here do go in for the odd check up or somethings off, or just to wave a spreadsheet at the vets, and most vets will tell you you dont have to test so much, your tormenting your cat etc...and then you get the vets who are in awe of your dedication and you impress the heck of them. :razz:
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Hi Dottie. Sounds like your friend's vet is a bit old school. One of the first thing my vet said to me was that they don't like to do curves at the hospital because the kitties are so prone to being stressed and sending the numbers up artificially. Also the Canadian Vet Association has come out recommending home testing . I wonder if this vet is aware of that.
 
What your friend's vet said makes no sense to me. Here's how I'm thinking about it. If a human diabetic goes to their MD, generally a blood test is done by venipuncture. Usually this is because more than one blood test is being run. So, the person would get a BG level along with a lot of other tests from that blood sample. I don't know of an MD who would tell a diabetic to not home test because the results from a finger stick don't give the "whole body picture." Unless the MD is running a complete blood panel, all that's being tested is BG.

Why would this be any different in a cat? We test on the ear because it's less painful. Blood is blood. You're getting the same reading no matter where you poke just like a human would get the same reading on a finger prick vs. the MD's blood draw. And there are certainly times when we've all missed the edge of the ear and hit the vein. The readings are not appreciably different.

If this vet is trying to say that blood is different in different parts of the body, then I want to know where s/he trained! The only difference in blood is whether it's arterial or venous and that has different oxygen content. Other components, like glucose, should be equally distributed.
 
Great explanation, Sienne. I was kind of thinking along the same lines and going over that vet's statement in my head. The last time Meadow was in for a curve at my vet hospital, I gave him my meter and asked him to run the bg's on my meter to compare it to what readings they got. Sure enough, the numbers were basically the same. He said my meter was "a few points more optimistic" than his machine, but readings were generally the same in both instances. The blood did come from her leg vein each time, but like you said, blood is blood.
Thanks for weighing in, everyone!
 
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