Re: 8/4 Polly AMPS 344+2=288+7=305 MSU RESULTS!
fortunately, you're surrounded by help, marilyn. many of us have dealt with those conditions and we'll stick with you.
it's good to know what you're dealing with.
i agree with what everyone before me has said. in many ways, you keep on as you've been doing, but perhaps a little more aggressively. one thing that can vary from one cat with acro to another is how they respond to carbs. punkin reacted just like any of the other non-acro cats here. i gave him a teaspoon of gravy and his numbers came up. I think he didn't have a working pancreas, even though he had acro and initially they all do. but the Rand/Roomp study showed that 3 days at sustained high numbers (i think it was over 540 in the study) is enough to cause a pancreas to decrease its own insulin output by something like 97%. Whether or not she has a working pancreas is something you'll be able to determine by giving her carbs and retesting her in 3 hrs to see if the carbs bring her numbers down. Neko's P is a working one.
the significance of that is that you want to know how to handle low numbers. You may need to give more carbs to pull up numbers. if you give a medium carb, it might be enough to stimulate her pancreas to drive down the numbers - the opposite of what you want. this is a trial/error thing, but i think it's important for you to pay attention next time you see polly in greens as to how she responds to carbs. she isn't going to suddenly change just because you got this diagnosis. Her patterns are her own and as far as i've seen, they will remain the same.
For now, just keep up with what you're doing. You might consider whether or not you want to have Polly's tumor treated with SRT. Both punkin and Neko had it done at CSU. That's the only chance for remission for an acro cat, unless their tumor shuts down. some do, and the cats stop being diabetic. some cats have the SRT and they still don't go off. punkin didn't. neko hasn't, although she still could.
You might want to try managing her with just giving her the amount of insulin she needs. i'm pretty convinced that keeping cats in normal numbers is still an appropriate goal for acro/iaa cats, although there are people on the facebook group with high dose cats who disagree with me. There are plenty of cats who've done very well with staying in green numbers and basically following an amended protocol,
Tommy for example.
That iaa is present, but fairly low. it might not have too much of an effect on things. we'll see. all cats have some iaa if they have insulin being injected into them. It's a foreign body, so the cat develops antibodies against it. iaa will run itself out, so people usually make dosing decisions based upon the acro.
big hug. you already knew this was likely the answer. knowledge is power. :YMHUG:
I like to read other people's theories and see how they apply to our situation. They might not apply, but you never know!
