Bailey - BG Curve Advice

[Bailey_W]

Bailey has been off insulin for five days now with BG numbers in the blues and greens. His AMBG today was 82 and PMBG was 75, no shots due to the low numbers.

We have been keeping him on his schedule, feeding at 7 and 7 and removing food approx. 2 hours prior to BG testing.

Our vet has asked us to do a BG curve tomorrow to see his levels throughout the day. Any advice on when we should take the readings throughout the day? We aren't sure if we should be taking readings every 2 hours? or 3 hours? We want to make sure we get enough data, but don't want to test him more than necessary.

Thank you.

 

[julie & punkin (ga)]

Since he's not getting insulin, I'd think every 3-4 hours would be plenty. Does your vet know that he isn't getting insulin? Usually when a cat isn't getting insulin people only check twice a day for the first couple of weeks, then once a day after that. In your situation, I'd be getting twice a day for another 10 days or so, then go to once a day for a while.

Usually we suggest people go down the dosing scale all the way to 0.1u in order to give the pancreas as much support as possible so it doesn't have to work any more than necessary until it's fully healed. Since Bailey's gone down from 1.0 to 0.5u and off, I'd just be very watchful with him so if his numbers start to trend up, you catch it right away. He may be fine, but if his pancreas is stressed it may have been too quick and you want to know if that's the case.

 

[Bailey_W]

Thanks for the info. We've been in contact with the vet on his BG levels and they are aware of the no insulin. Since we're so new they recommended we didn't shoot any thing under 160. We'll continue to monitor him to make sure the BG levels don't increase.

 

[Tricia Cinco(GA) & Harvey]

Hi Scott and Jamie.

I just wanted to say hello and tell you that I think your Bailey is beautiful. I had a cream tabby, too. My Cinco was my first sugar kitty and the reason I found FDMB.

He lost both his eyes due to glaucoma and lymphoma, but he was loaded with personality.

It's very exciting that Bailey is off insulin. I hope he continues to do well. Just remember that, even if he is off insulin, he is still diabetic, so you still have to be vigilant about what he eats and watch for signs he's fallen out of remission. Cinco went into remission after just a couple of months on insulin (thanks to the help I got here), but he fell out about a year later due to the combination of my allowing him to eat dry food and contracting the Bartonella virus (which led to the glaucoma and blindness).

Please check in with us and keep us up to date on how Bailey is doing. Ask questions - we love to help!