Balancing work hours and dosage times

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shelaghc

shelaghc

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This morning was a no-brainer. Jester's AMPS was well over 300 and he got 2U.

The latest dilemma was that I leave about 8:00AM and get home before 5:00PM.
While I can get up early enough to give Jester his AM dosage at about 6:30ish, it's harder to make him wait until after 6:00PM to eat when he's just not used to it.
Yesterday it didn't matter quite as much because his AMPS was so low I gave him no insulin at all and wound up giving him his PM dosage shortly after I got home.

A bit more problematic today. No way in the world can I get up any earlier than 6:30AM - I'm not that kind of person. And I can't get up, check his BG, dose him, and go back to sleep for an hour. When I'm out of bed and moving around, I can't get back to sleep.
So AMPS and AM dosage time is pretty fixed in stone. (So not looking forward to my first weekend after a week on the job with no way to sleep in. :-<)

And getting home before 5:00PM, I'll either be torturing poor Jester by making him wait over an hour, or fudge things a bit.

So here's my current plan:

I'll get home when I get home, make sure I have walking shoes in the car, and take about a half hour power walk in the neighborhood.
Get inside, clean off, do what I need to when I get home and take Jester's PMPS. If it's in a safe range (150 and over) he gets to eat right away and gets insulin at about the twelve hour point.
If it's lower than that, I stall for half an hour more, then check again.

But there's just no way I'm going to be able to ignore him for nearly two hours and not feed him when I know how hungry he is. I'm not made of that stuff that stern.

TBH, most likely, I'll just feed him and give him his usual dosage within a safe time frame anyway. Unless he starts eating a lot more lower carb foods, there's next to no chance his BG is going to go to anything scary low. Today I managed to coax him to eat a whopping 1/3 of a can of low carb pate - and that took nearly half an hour. But he inhaled the carby shreds.

Yeah, there will certainly be some variations on the theme over time, and we'll probably do a mid-cycle most evenings. But I unless his AMPS or his slightly early PMPS change dramatically life is going to go like this for the time being.
 
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Why not get an automatic pet feeder so you can make food available from say noon until 3pm and then have it unavailable after that so your preshot is not food influenced.


I work all day too... For me I leave out wet food (they are all grazers) and leave a handful of young again zero carb dry.
 
JanetNJ said:
Why not get an automatic pet feeder so you can make food available from say noon until 3pm and then have it unavailable after that so your preshot is not food influenced.


I work all day too... For me I leave out wet food (they are all grazers) and leave a handful of young again zero carb dry.
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I wish I could add this to my signature somehow. I can't tell you how many times I've had to answer this exact same question over and over and over again.

No. This is not possible.

First, I can't afford automatic pet feeders. They're too freakin' expensive and I've been living on less than $9,000 a year.
Second, Jester never sits in one place to eat for longer than a couple of minutes. I have to continuously watch for when he stops eating, then either move the food around in his bowl and give it back to him or move the bowl to wherever he's decided is now the perfect place to eat. This happens every. single. meal.

Third, Sage - my tortie - is a food thief. If I don't either stash her in the bathroom to eat by herself or keep an eye on her when Jester and / or Bastian are eating, she will stick her lovely nose into their dish to eat and they will meekly allow her and walk away.

Fourth, Jester can't eat Young Again. He had a blockage when he was about a year and a half old and the only dry food he can safely consume is Hills C/D.
 
Okay, okay.... before you yell at Janet about the automatic pet feeder and the multiple cat situation....;)

I think the best solution to this is going to be that as soon as you get home, give Jester some low carb food to eat. Maybe half of his normal amount. If he's hungry enough he'll eat it. If he doesn't want to eat it, then he can wait until shot time. Two hours later, you can do test/feed/shoot, and give him shreds at that feeding.

If you test him early and shoot him later the data will be inaccurate and misleading. And I do understand not wanting to make him wait that whole time. But since you have two hours between getting home and t/f/s most days, go ahead and give him a snack, give him a few minutes to eat it, and then take it away until the real time. Does that seem workable?
 
Djamila said:
I think the best solution to this is going to be that as soon as you get home, give Jester some low carb food to eat. Maybe half of his normal amount. If he's hungry enough he'll eat it. If he doesn't want to eat it, then he can wait until shot time. Two hours later, you can do test/feed/shoot, and give him shreds at that feeding.
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Honestly, he just doesn't like the pate. Yesterday evening and this morning I tried for half an hour to get him to eat more than a couple of mouthfuls. Then he whined and begged for his carby food until he heard me open the can.

At this point, as long as he's not going low, I'll take it. And time-wise it's the difference between checking Jester's BG at 5:15PM and 6:30PM.

I know you all want perfect numbers and as much exactness as is humanly possibly. But I get stressed out and sometimes I just need to sit down and deal with my life. And now with a new job along with all of the other stressors that are being thrown at me (don't even get me started on my boss trying to talk me into a fourteen to fifteen hour day trip for the job and knowing I can't do it because I can't be gone from home that long without an alternate to take care of Jester), I need to keep things as simple as is humanly possible as well.

And I don't mean any offense by this. I appreciate all the expertise you all have. You're knowledgeable and amazing. And you've saved my sanity more times than I can count since I found this board.

Jester is still my priority, but I can't be a good kitty mom and keep a job if I'm having melt-downs because I can't be perfect.
 
:bighug::bighug::bighug:

Sending you hugs and heaps of understanding. Hang in there. You're adjusting to a lot right now. It will all work out in due time. And no offense taken. :cat:
 
Djamila said:
:bighug::bighug::bighug:

Sending you hugs and heaps of understanding. Hang in there. You're adjusting to a lot right now. It will all work out in due time. And no offense taken. :cat:
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tyk

And what do you think of a +5 at 120 with a three hour fast? (Jester's been begging for a night-time munch for over an hour.)
 
That looks great! I hope he enjoys his snack and I hope you have a good night's sleep. I'm heading to sleep myself now and I'm on the left coast!
 
JanetNJ said:
ok then.
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Very sorry how my reply came out. Sometimes it feels like I have to explain my three furkids' eating habits every other day. And with so much going on in my life right now, I burbled it out in text form way more emphatically than you deserved.

I know you were trying to be helpful and I always appreciate the support of everyone here.

Thanks and my apologies.
 
And just to make life interesting, after predominantly yellows and pinks every morning (with a couple of stray blues), today's AMPS was 181.
If I was monitoring and he had access to food all day, I might have gone with 2U. But the last time his BG was close to today's, he went pretty close to a green number and that was with food during the day.
Today he got 1U as a precaution .
 
shelaghc said:
And just to make life interesting, after predominantly yellows and pinks every morning (with a couple of stray blues), today's AMPS was 181.
If I was monitoring and he had access to food all day, I might have gone with 2U. But the last time his BG was close to today's, he went pretty close to a green number and that was with food during the day.
Today he got 1U as a precaution .
Click to expand...
Your own peace of mind while you're away from home is important. Jester will be fine. :)
 
Fascinating.
PMPS is 238
Yes, it was taken a bit early. But still not bad. He inhaled an entire can of shreds and I had to give him his insulin early too.
Tomorrow should be interesting.
 
And now Jester is mad at me. I've been making a habit of taking a 3-hour fasting +5 in the evening so I get a good idea of how low he's going after his dosage. It's as close an approximation of what he goes through during the day while I'm at work as I can get.

Although all this week I've been letting him munch all the way through to just before the cutuff for that three -hour stretch. Today I had to leave right after he finished eating and got home after the three-hour cutoff. He's been fussing at me for food for over an hour and a half now and we still have another hour to go.

That +5 has the potential to be a real eye opener.

And hopefully Jester will forgive me after I crack open a brand new can for him at 10:30PM
:::sigh::::
 
Then he jumps back up to 282 this morning and decided he didn't need to eat much.
Got less than 2/3 can into him. Intellectually I know he should be fine.
Still gonna worry.
 
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