As the Mikey Turns

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Marycatmom

Marycatmom

Member Since 2014
This morning Mikey's bg was so high the meter couldn't read it. He also refused to eat. I gave him the new dose of .5 lantis. I was able to leave work on my prep periods and retest. He came down and now PS is 178. He is currently eating. I am still in the process of changing his food over. I suspect that I misfired with last night's shot. Do I shoot??? Spreadsheet attached.
 
Can you stall 30 minutes without feeding and retest? If rising and closer to 200 then shoot, if still dropping then either stall another 30 minutes and retest or skip for now.

Mel and The Fur Gang
 
BG was rising, so I fed him, then shot. It's falling a bit more than I'm happy with, so he got some food with gravy, which he thinks is just heavenly. I wish he'd eat the regular canned food like that. Meanwhile, civvie DK is starting to get annoyed that Mikey is getting all the attention.
 
Hi Mary!

just fyi, he's safe down to 50, and when he goes below 50 is when you want to give carbs. you learned tonight that he'll respond nicely to the gravy and you pulled him up just fine. That will happen when he gets lower as well. The reason I'm suggesting that you wait to give carbs until he is lower is because the longer he spends in normal numbers, 50-120, the more opportunity there is for his pancreas to heal. If you bring him up above 120 sooner than necessary, it's not as good for his pancreas to heal.

I see it's been 4 hours or so since your last post. I wanted to invite you post on the Tight Reg insulin support group here. It's a busy forum and you'll get quick replies. The people in that group are trying to get their cats into remission. We'd be happy to teach you what you need to know to help Mikey. :-D
 
Thank you so much for all the information. As you no doubt already know, I am on a HUGE learning curve. I'm going to read a bunch of the posts the link lead me to. Very, very interesting stuff!
 
it takes a while to absorb all the information on FD. At first, you don't even know what questions to ask.

If you see things that you want clarified, just ask. I will say that I don't usually look at Main Health, so if you want me to see your questions, keep posting on this thread. When I look to follow up on my previous posts, if you have posted something, it will turn up for me.
 
Thank you, Julie. I just wish I could get him off the dry food. He'll eat a little canned, but not enough, so I end up giving him dry. It's the Purina DM dry, but it's still dry and too high in carbs. I've tried mixing dry with wet and sprinkling crushed dry over the canned. I'm going to try some different flavors next. I've also tried cat psychology aka forbidding him to eat the wet food. It only worked for one day. Good thing he's cute!
 
You might try Young Again 0 Carb, Stella and Chewey's freeze dried, or Epigen 90.
 
Hi Mary!

If psychology didn't work, take a peek at this post I just now wrote for someone else. It might be more helpful! ;-)

julie & punkin (ga) said:
Lantus is an excellent insulin for cats. It's likely you didn't see the results you were hoping for only because you either didn't go up enough in dose, didn't catch the lower numbers when the curve with the vet was scheduled, or because of the dry food. It's not that it wouldn't work for him - really. If you know how to use it and how to adjust the doses, it works. You don't need to worry about acromegaly either - you have dry food in the picture and that completely explains the dose. In fact, the dose is probably not high enough to compensate for the dry food.

We know from people's experiments that dry food can cause very high numbers - even just 3 pieces of kibble can raise a cat's blood sugar more than 100 points and it can last for a day. Here is the spreadsheet of the cat I was mentioning.

Scooter lives in a household of 13 cats. Linda was pretty certain he wasn't eating the dry food because he didn't seem interested in it. She did all the right things - she got his teeth cleaned, she tried switching him from Lantus to Levemir, she fed the other cats their dry food separately from Scooter, etc. When everything else had been exhausted, she took the dry food out of the house. Turned out that Mr. Scooter had been sneaking crunchies when she wasn't looking! :lol:

He went from 5.5u to off of insulin. The day before the dry food disappeared he was in the 350's. After the dry food went away and he settled down from bouncing from the low numbers, he was in the 50's. That's the power of dry food. The day she took away the dry food was a harrowing day - she was testing every 30 minutes or so and his blood sugar wasn't coming up and staying up. But the outcome was no more insulin for Scooter.

Scooter's 5.5u on Dry Food to OTJ on Feb 19, 2014

You can scan down his spreadsheet and see that two more times he got into dry food and his blood sugar went up to 400+ from it.

Dry food can have as much as 50% carbs. It's pretty impossible to get a cat's pancreas to heal and for the cat to go off of insulin if they are eating dry food.

However, making the transition from dry food to only low carb canned food has to be done carefully. As you withdraw the excessive carbs, the insulin dose will be too large. Do it gradually while you are hometesting so you can reduce his insulin.

We can help you get going on the hometesting. It overwhelms everyone at the beginning, but once you learn how it's no harder than brushing your teeth. When I was talking on the phone while testing punkin, I realized I'd made it. It had become easy when I never thought it would be. The first 2 weeks of testing him I was dragging him by his arms out from under the furniture, hoping i didn't dislocate his arms! Then I had to wrap him in a towel and pin down his front legs so he wouldn't escape. But after 2 weeks he gave up, his ears bled every time, and I knew we were on our way. You'll get there too.

Newly diagnosed cats have a huge advantage in being able to heal and go off of insulin if they get regulated asap. Time is of the essence. Make the most of the advantage. :-D

edited to add: here is an excellent site with tips on Feeding your Cat including a link (see the right hand column or slide down the page) on Transitioning your Dry Food Addict to Canned Food.
Click to expand...
 
Very interesting post. So much to wrap my mind around. I can't wait until the weekend, so that I will have some time to process what I am reading. I tried Fancy Feast Classic Turkey tonight, and Mikey really liked it. I just hope he keeps liking it! I gave him half a can, but still fed him some dry, because I don't want to switch him too fast. Now I'm going to try to convince him that the new boot box in the house isn't as comfy as the bed. Otherwise, we might have a boot box in bed with us tonight. lol
 
He's fairly low at +4. Keep an eye on him - make sure he has food to eat overnight.
 
Here is an update in our continuing saga "As the Mikey Turns" also know as "Days of our Spreadsheet". Mikey has decided that unlike the chicken, FF turkey is essentially kitty crack. He eats the stuff up and begs for more. I'm still in the process of transitioning him, but we're more than half way there. He's not thrilled about the dry now, but he eats it. lol I'd love some thoughts on his spreadsheet. Also, the dry food is a zillion calories, and FF is far less. He still needs to gain some weight back. How much FF should he be eating, once the transition is finished? This is a cat who, as long as he is meal fed, has always maintained his weight without me measuring his food. His appetite has been right on. Thank you!
 
Hi Mary!!

Good job handling those numbers last night but Mikey earned a reduction with that 48. I'd reduce his dose to 0.25u bid tonight. It's fine you shot the 0.5u dose this morning because we often will "shoot through the bounce" with the higher dose once just to try and curb the bounce. He's coming back down which is great!

Dr. Lisa has a formula for calculating amount of food needed. It is (13.6 x ideal weight) +70; I know Mikey has been underweight but is slowly gaining. If his ideal weight is 9 lbs, then 13.6 x 9 = 122 + 70 = 192 calories/day. You could weight him, feed him that amount of calories for a week, see if he gains or loses, and then adjust. Dr. Lisa does say that is a generous calculation of calories and will need to be adjusted by the amount of activity the kitty gets, etc. I used this formula starting out for Gracie and Tobey and found it was a little too many calories even though they are both active. So I just started cutting back very, very slowly.
 
i'm glad you reduced his dose tonight.

i think it's amazing that Mikey is down to 0.25u while he is still eating any dry food at all. Typically cats eating any dry food will need considerably more insulin than usual.

Everything that has happened with mikey would suggest that he may be one of the lucky kitties that could go OTJ and become diet-controlled if you got him completely off of dry food. I can't say that for sure, of course, but he looks very promising. If he's not thrilled about the dry, and is willing to eat the canned, I'd get rid of the dry completely.

If you want to try stopping the dry food tomorrow, for example, it would be great if one of us was available to check on you throughout the day just in case you need help.

You could even skip a shot so that when you withdraw the dry food carbs he doesn't go too low for too long. If you're going to do that, make sure it's when you can monitor and test about every couple of hours, increasing testing to every half hour once he goes below 100. You might post on the Lantus TR ISG if you're doing that - there is a lot of traffic there and you could get advice as the day goes on for when you need to test next, for example.
 
I wish I'd seen this before I fed and shot Mikey this morning! I'm sick, so I rolled out of bed with the alarm, did the Mikey Shuffle, then crashed. I did cut him to 3/4 canned and 1/4 dry. He was still hungry, but I told him he was going to have to manage. My vet said he has high hopes for Mikey being completely diet controlled. Apparently the fact that we caught this very early ups his odds.
 
If you haven't already got a scales to weigh Mikey at home, digital baby scales are great. I got one for Saoirse at a very reasonable price on ebay. It makes monitoring her calorie intake much, much easier.
 
Check his glucose again between +5 and +7, when he is likely to be at his lowest.

And just checking - when you say switched 1/4, did you do that by calory content, of by volume? Wet food is much greater volume because it is about 70% water vs dry food at about 10% water. A typical 8 pound cat may need 1 1/2 cans of Fancy Feast per meal vs 1/4 -1/3 cup of dry food.
 
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