7/5/2023 New Member

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I.P.F.

I.P.F.

Member Since 2023
Hello everybody,
My name is Jim and the proud parent of O.P.F. (Oil Pan Face). I named the cat that because when he was born he was pure white with an oil black face. Looked just like he stuck his face in an oil pan. He is an 11 yr old kitty (12.5 lbs) recently diagnosed with diabetes and neuropathy. I found this website as I searched day and night for help as the Vet was borderline useless, (Wanted to put him down which I called B.S.). From my understanding Diabetes can be controlled and neuropathy can be healed once the diabetes is under control. Ive since put him on insulin but have a few questions on my numbers. I will post those in a different message as this was just my introduction.
Thank you everyone for the help as me and my kitty will appreciate it.
Jim
 
Welcome Jim & OPF (lol) I'm new to this App having trusted my vet until he wanted to put the insulin dosage so high and search for other things causing the problem. Unfortunately that would have meant saying goodbye to Bonnie as in the current Australian financial situation I would have quite seriously not been able to make the mortgage payments and pay vets bills.
I went for a diet change to Fancy Feast (zero carbs) and in 48 hours her BG was so low (from top of the scale to lowest) that I was able to more than halve her dose from the vets suggested 10U to 3U. She also stopped drinking nearly 1litre of water a day - it's now that a week.
I hope you can get OPF to a great place. There's a lot of experienced ppl in here and a lot of help. You just have to ask.
 
Welcome Jim and OPF!!!

I’m so glad you called the BS! Diabetic cats can live perfectly healthy lives and we can help you make sure that happens! I mean look at that face, how can anyone suggest you put him down?!?!

if you already have numbers to share, it must mean you’re home testing and that’s great! Sadly in my experience, most vets are useless when it comes to feline diabetes. They do not know a lot about feline diabetes…. Quite the opposite. they have many animals to look after and they all have different diseases and treatments. Vets also get their information about nutrition from the big cat food manufacturers so they are biased in what they recommend. What food are you currently feeding OPF (best name ever!)?

With a diabetic cat you need
  • A low carb wet diet that is 10% carbs or under. Most of us use around 4-7% carbs
  • A suitable insulin such as Lantus or Prozinc which are long acting, more gentle insulins than the old insulins.
  • We recommend hometesting the blood glucose with a human meter…it is not necessary to use a pet meter which is expensive to run and is no better. It will keep your kitty safe and you will know how the dose is working for your kitty. Only testing every so often will not tell you what is happening in between those times and an awful lot can happen in even a day.
  • HELP US HELP YOU has information about the spreadsheet, signature and hypo box
Can you tell us what insulin your kitty has been prescribed and the dose you have him on please?

A word of warning though…don’t change the food you are feeding at the moment over to the low carb food until you are testing the blood glucose because a change over can drop the BGs by up to 100 points and we don’t want you to have a hypo on your hands.

We are happy to help you with setting up the spreadsheet, sorting out what food to buy, how to transition safely to a low carb diet, how to learn to home test and much more.

Minnie had severe neuropathy too and she recovered 95% once she was regulated. Methyl b12 supplements really help and Zobaline is the best known version but there are cheaper generic options too
 
Hello all and thank you for the quick response and I will try and give you as much information as possible so I can receive the best help. As for insulin I give him Novolin N over the counter as the vet refused to prescribe him any insulin and gave me anti-inflammatory drops to help with the neuropathy. I did do a full blood test which covered everything from the vet and he said everything looks excellent except he is diabetic and has neuropathy. (Lets go back to the beginning) When I first went to the vet his BG was 518 and he told me to change O.P.F.'s diet and he sold me some extremely expensive food I'm sure they get a kickback on for promoting it. I controlled his feeding and went back in 2 weeks and the vet tested him again and this time everything was good except his BG which was 578. This was when the vet recommended I put him in their hospital or consider euthanization as the neuropathy would not get better. I told the vet I would consider my options and left and that was when I began my research. It was then I put him on Blood sugar gold but I did not have a BG test kit yet and was waiting for it to come as I had to order it. Once the test kit came (Pet Pro) I tested him and it was 438. The next day I tested him again and it was 534 so I figured the blood sugar gold was not working so it was then I went and bought Novolin N from Walmart. I am also feeding him Fancy feast 0 carbs and I do B12 in the morning and Zoboline at night. For the insulin I started with 2 units and his numbers did nothing. there was zero change. I moved it to 3 units and slight improvements. To make a long story short I found that 6 units seems to be the magical number. Here are some of his numbers on 6 units as I don't want to take up to much time. 322, 356, 224, 224, 158, (I only test him once a day in the evening time.) Today I did a blood glucose curve and these were the times and numbers on 6 units of Novolin N (5:15 - 376) (7:30 - 218) (9:30 - 126) (11:30 - 158) (1:30 - 291) (5:30 - 370). After doing some research online I'm not sure but this matched the graph of a fast metabolism cat. I'm hoping for advice if those numbers look good. Should I increase, decrease, stay the same, pray to god. (One note: He did have a small meal about 1:00 as he was screaming he was starving to death).
Jim
 
6 units is a big dose but unfortunately, I’m not familiar with Novolin. Tagging a few others who may be @Sienne and Gabby (GA) @Marje and Gracie @Wendy&Neko @Suzanne & Darcy

If you can set up a spreadsheet and transfer the data you have, that would be helpful and it’s really the only way we can give you dosing advice. The times don’t mean anything to us because we need to know them in reference to shot times. Take a peak at my cats’ spreadsheet linked in my signature. I’ll say this we often see members here whose cats are on a big dose of insulin and it’s unwarranted. You see we recommend disse adjustments by 1/4 units and you have been increasing his dose by 1 unit at a time. The problem with that is you risk speeding right past the ideal dose. I’m wondering if you can look for another vet who can prescribe you a better insulin like the 2 I mentioned above. here’s the link to the novolin forum. You may want to read the yellow sticky notes about novolin:
https://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/beginners-guide-to-humulin-n-novolin-n-nph.231593/

The guidelines from the American Animal Hospital Assn for the treatment of diabetes in both dogs no longer recommends Caninsulin/Vetsulin or Novolin for treating feline diabetes.
 
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About food, cats do better with several meals throughout the day. It’s easier on their pancreas and it helps avoid big sugar spikes. Most of us feed the larger meals at shot times and smaller meals or treats throughout the day. Unregulated diabetic cats can’t process the nutrients in food so they eat but are alway hungry and will still lose weight
 
The other very important thing about testing. You need to test before each shot. Especially with a fast acting insulin like Novolin, I strongly recommmend that you to test before the morning and evening shots to make sure it’s safe to give insulin. It sounds from what I read on the link I gave you that you need to test, feed and wait 60 minutes before giving the shot. With fast acting insulins, you want to make sure there’s food on board before they shot since they hit hard and fast.

Do you think you can start testing before the shots, so at least twice a day? We recommend more but that’s the bare minimum to keep him safe. We also advise that you withhold food for at least 2 hours before the test so the bg result you get is true and not influenced by food.

don’t worry about taking up our time, this is what we’re here for and we’re happy to help. Keep asking questions!
 
I.P.F. said:
I give him Novolin N over the counter as the vet refused to prescribe him any insulin and gave me anti-inflammatory drops to help with the neuropathy.
Click to expand...
Any chance you could find another vet? This one sounds like they have very little experience with feline diabetes. Can you tell me the name of the anti-inflammatory drops?

A couple other comments and questions. What food are you feeding now? What was he on before the diabetes diagnosis? The wrong food can make a huge difference in the size of insulin dose needed.

Blood testing - good for you in getting started on that. You do not need to have a pet meter. Most of us here use human meters because the test strips are so much cheaper and you do go through quite a few of them. Plus they are easily available at local stores. In the US, a lot people get them from Walmart, the Relion brand. And lastly, our dosing methods are based on numbers from human meters, because that's what people use. When I start here, no one was using pet meters at all. My vet was also using a human meter.
 
Hello all. I have included a chart with all the information I have collected so far. As of now he is on canned food Fancy feast chunky and for his dry food it is Purina pro plan DM dietetic management. I have heard so many different things about novolin being fast acting, and then also being intermediate acting. I am just doing the best I can which is why I am here. Please all let me know what you think of his numbers and what I should change. Appreciate all the advice I can get.
Jim
 

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of course. it’s in the first link I gave you, here you go again:

HELP US HELP YOU has information about the spreadsheet, signature and hypo box which you will need to be able to look after your beloved kitty properly

I do think you need to start testing more times a day. Are you able to do that? What’s your work schedule like?

it’s important to test before each shot. Is there a conflict or reason you wouldn’t be able to do that? For most of the days I see on the screenshot you attached, you’re only testing once and not always before the shots. It’s important to keep your cat safe and the reason is you want to make sure the bg is high enough to give insulin, especially with a high dose like 6 units.

The FF chunky is fine, but eventually, you’ll want to transition him off of the dry but do not do that at the moment as the high dry food may be what’s keeping him safe. This is not meant to scare you, but a hypo can kill and we want to make sure it doesn’t happen. If you want to keep him on dry food, the only 2 low carb options are Dr. Elseys and Young Again Zero Carb.
 
I only test once a day as I work 12 midnight until 4 most of the time (16 hour days) most of the time. My wife is home but has a hard time doing the BG test alone. She does okay with giving him the shot.
 
I.P.F. said:
Hello everybody,
My name is Jim and the proud parent of O.P.F. (Oil Pan Face). I named the cat that because when he was born he was pure white with an oil black face. Looked just like he stuck his face in an oil pan. He is an 11 yr old kitty (12.5 lbs) recently diagnosed with diabetes and neuropathy. I found this website as I searched day and night for help as the Vet was borderline useless, (Wanted to put him down which I called B.S.). From my understanding Diabetes can be controlled and neuropathy can be healed once the diabetes is under control. Ive since put him on insulin but have a few questions on my numbers. I will post those in a different message as this was just my introduction.
Thank you everyone for the help as me and my kitty will appreciate it.
Jim
Click to expand...

Welcome Jim and OPF, which is a fantastic name, btw. You have found the right place to be - this forum and the people on it will help you make the best decisions for OPF. As it happens, I have a new bottle of Zobaline and am looking to gift it to a kitty. I think I only used 3 pills, so it would give you almost 2 months of trial. I you'd like it, please contact me via private message (start a conversation with me) and I'll put it in the mail on Monday as an overnight package. No cost to you.
 
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Bandit's Mom said:
Hi Jim, let me know if you need me to set-up a spreadsheet in our format so you can enter OPF's BG data. Won't take me a minute. I can also set-up your Signature for you.
Click to expand...
Yes, I could use a bit of help getting this set up correctly.
Thank you
 
Hi Jim,

Just wanted to share the SS of a cat that was on dry food and was up to 9U of Novolin twice a day. The caregiver switched from dry food to 100% canned food and the cat went into remission!
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...6liBMGeOmMU0/edit?gid=361360320#gid=361360320

However, like @Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) said, the removal of dry food can make a big difference to his numbers and insulin dose. So I would not remove his dry food overnight while keeping him at 6U. Especially since you cannot test as much. You want to make the food transition more gradually. Can you test more over weekends?

Here are some more economic options for Methyl B12:
https://www.amazon.com/Vitamin-B12-Methylcobalamin-5000-mcg/dp/B08154TKT8/
https://www.vitacost.com/vitacost-vitamin-b-12-methylcobalamin-5000-mcg-100-capsules-6

@Bron and Sheba (GA)
 
Great!

I would hold off on making any food switches until you can be home to test him and make sure he’s not dropping too low because 6 units is a high dose
 
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