7/7 Boots AMPS 138 | +5 148 | PMPS 123 - Dosing advice?

[Megan and Boots (GA)]

Last condo

So Boots has been holding at 3.75U for 12 cycles now. Numbers are good overall, mostly right in the normal (though mid- to high-end) range. He's dipped down into the 1-teens and even tried out a sub-100 number over the weekend which was exciting!

Should we keep holding here and see if he slides down a bit more - maybe more readings just under 100? Or should we bump to 4U and see how that works for him? It is Tuesday, and we won't be able to do full-day monitoring and testing until the weekend, if that matters. So far, even with his increases, it's not been bringing about any dramatic drops all of a sudden, if you check out his SS, so maybe it's OK that we're not around for much of the AM cycle.

I think part of me stubbornly just doesn't want to have to increase again (because doesn't everyone want their kitty to be the one who just magically is getting normal readings at a teeny tiny dose?), but if he needs it, we of course will do so and bump him to 4.

What do you think?

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

I'd go up to 4.0. The important numbers are the blood sugar, not the size of the dose! That's what people told me when punkin was diagnosed with acro and he was around 9 units, and it's very true. Cats need whatever they need.

You've got 12 cycles at the 3.75u. If it was going to get him all in green, it would've by now. The difference with your AT is just that you reduce at 68, so you basically want him in the 50 points or so over that, just like if you were using a human meter and the reduction point is 50. The goal is the roughly 50 points above that.

As far as when you do that, it's up to you. I'd probably go ahead and just make sure he has food available during the days, but I would want food available no matter what the size of the dose.

 

[Megan and Boots (GA)]

Thanks for your advice. I am trying to focus on how good all these greens look, and how awesome it was to dip below 100 the other night, so if 4 will make that happen more, then 4 it shall be!

So what you said about the goal on an AT meter is to have him in the range from 68 up 50 pts to 118 or so. That's actually really helpful to know, since most of the literature is based on human glucometer readings and just sort of ballparks the AT/pet meter values. So I had been going on keeping him in the 68-130 range, which I guess isn't too far off from what you've noted, but it would be nice to see some more numbers closer to the lower values we've hit, and fewer spikes (generally first thing in the AM) up in the 140-150 range. But I do feel like we're approaching the "Hold the Dose" phase from the TR Protocol which is pretty exciting because it means we're routinely in the "normal" BG values!

Regarding food - we don't currently do any free feeding, mostly because we're a 3-cat household, and one is still on "regular" HC kibble (work in progress!). I don't yet have a timed feeder to put canned food in for Boots. I am able almost every day (M-F) to run home from work mid-day (around his +4/+5) to do a quick BG check and give him a snack. Is that sufficient? He eats normally about 6 small meals a day, sometimes a tiny bit more, and generally one "snack" time at night (lately we've been tossing around either freeze-dried chicken bits or some Young Again Zero Carb kibble as treats for him to run and chase). Is that enough, or should we get a timed feeder and hope that the other kitties don't beat him to it all the time? It may not be a big deal now, but I do worry as we get lower numbers more frequently. There are a few good things though as far as that's concerned: 1) I have a pretty flexible job, so could work from home on short notice if he gets a very low AMPS reading and I don't want to leave him; 2) I have a bunch of vacation time to use up this summer, so can take days off to stay home with him as his numbers get lower. I am just praying that he keeps up with this steady cycle every day, staying pretty flat like he has been. No surprises, please, Bootsy Boy!

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

Is that sufficient?

It's pretty hard to answer that. Depends upon everything . . . know what I mean? I wrote in the sticky on how to follow Tight Reg while working what we did with punkin - i ran home every day, sometimes my husband ran home too. We had a timed feeder that always opened at +3. We had one other cat at the time, Anya, but there was no doubt punkin would get the food from the timed feeder before Anya, and he always ate from it. So sometimes we put high carb in it.

That example of 50 points above 68 is just my own observation of what *might* be comparable to the normal range for a human glucometer. The last year or so we've had a lot of people using AT2s, compared to before, and it's been a struggle on how to help them when all of our docs are in human numbers. The thing that is a constant is Dr. Rand's protocol that says 68 AT & 50 human glucometer is the reduction point. So I'd just aim for above that as much as possible.

 

[Megan and Boots (GA)]

I think the feeder sounds like a good safety measure to have on hand, especially as we start to get more AMPS readings <100. Is this one the one you used successfully with Punkin? I think the only competition for food would be Emily since Polly isn't touching canned food, but Boots is a smart cookie, so I suspect he'd quickly learn the sound of it opening and make a bee-line for it.

Well as an AT2 user, I for one very much appreciate your help, even if it means having to do some extra math! I don't even remember now where I got the 68-130 range, but I guess it's not a bad estimate for a "good" target range to get Boots settled into, and we've definitely been getting a lot of readings there. But tomorrow we'll increase to 4.0U and see where that gets him in the next couple of days.

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

Yes, that's the same one I had. It's awesome. If you look at reviews, the one consistent complaint is that it doesn't open all the way. We found that as long as you get the food tray fully seated in the base unit, and you can tell it's fully seated by pressing a button that makes it rotate forward one opening, that it always worked. We just routinely seated the food tray back a couple of openings so we could manually rotate it forward and make sure it was fully seated. I hope that makes sense.

It is really noisy when it rotates, but even punkin who was scared of loud noises, figured out there would be food afterwards. We fed him using it while we were home at first until we were confident that he would use it.