Re: 8/1/14 charlie amps 343 +2 269
Darin, let your girlfriend know that this is short-term intensive in the hopes that he will go off of insulin. Maybe if she understands that it will help things.
diabetic cats go through phases. if you look at the protocol, you can see that it's broken up into dosing guidelines based upon the phase. in the beginning is "increasing the dose." Charlie's gone through that phase, and now he's in the second phase - "reducing the dose." there is obviously some healing beginning because he is getting dose reductions and holding them. if he continues to stay in normal numbers, there is every reason to think that the healing will continue. I can't promise anything, of course, but that's what typically happens.
As to why he's dropping at +2 - Elise is right, it's a signal that it's an extra-active cycle and he needs extra testing - so it's great your GF is going to check him at +4. Let's just watch him for a while at the 3.0u and see if it's going to be enough to get him in normal numbers or if he's going to need to go to 3.25 to get back there. If he isn't back in green numbers by tonight, i might consider going back to 3.25u in the morning to recapture the momentum he had going at 3.5u.
Your question about how you keep from looking at him as just a number . . . the best thing i can suggest is to keep your eyes on the fact that he isn't even aware of his blood sugar. He's the same sweet kitty whether his BGs are high or low, although he may feel yucky sometimes with the changing. there's nothing about FD that is easy, although people who have long-term diabetic cats do get into a routine. Charlie's only 2 months into this and his chances are still good for healing. After some experience you can tell looking at spreadsheets when a cat's "clicked" with the dose and things begin to look very optimistic. Charlie did it at 3.75u.
One less-than-perfect way to help you know when to test and when you can stretch out intervals - when he's on his way down, look at the number of points dropped since the last test and see how fast that is, then consider if he stayed at that rate, how soon would he get below 50? Cats don't drop at a constant rate per hour, so you have to consider how Charlie typically operates, but it is a guideline that definitely helped me when someone pointed it out.
In the second half of the cycle, once he's reached nadir and is on his way up - you don't need to test again til the next preshot. night before last when you got the 299 @+7 - you could stop testing then and go to bed.
Anyway, lean on us when you need encouragement. It's what the group is here for. :YMHUG: