Bella and her dosing

C

Christine and Bella

Member Since 2025
Hello,

Just wanted to post to see what I should do about bella. She is all over the place when it comes to her numbers, not sure how to get her consistent. She is finally off her steriods and has been for a little bit so that is out of her system I think. She is only on .25 and something she drops pretty low with just that. Do you think that is ok?
 
Yes. I do think that she still needs that dose of insulin. She is very bouncy and has good cycles ad then goes high before having good numbers again.

I would not have skipped tonight’s dose. That isn’t going to help her. If you look back on your spreadsheet, you have shot similar or lower numbers before (with even a larger dose than .25) so as long as you can give jer a few mini meals and get a couple of tests, giving the .25 should be fine.

Look at what has happened in the past with skipped shots. She goes really high.
 
Suzanne & Darcy said:
Yes. I do think that she still needs that dose of insulin. She is very bouncy and has good cycles ad then goes high before having good numbers again.

I would not have skipped tonight’s dose. That isn’t going to help her. If you look back on your spreadsheet, you have shot similar or lower numbers before (with even a larger dose than .25) so as long as you can give jer a few mini meals and get a couple of tests, giving the .25 should be fine.

Look at what has happened in the past with skipped shots. She goes really high.
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I haven't decided on skipping yet, its only 1 hour past her shot time so I was going to see if she was trending up
 
Do not skip shots when she’s in the higher blues. Even in the lower blues I do not believe she would be in danger with the .25 unit dose. Try to not skip shots as much as possible.

On January 18 you shot a 159 with .75 units. On Feb 23, you shot a 182 with .5 units. On March 3, you shot a 137 with .75 units. So you have shot many of these blue numbers before— even with higher doses.
 
Suzanne & Darcy said:
Do not skip shots when she’s in the higher blues. Even in the lower blues I do not believe she would be in danger with the .25 unit dose. Try to not skip shots as much as possible.

On January 18 you shot a 159 with .75 units. On Feb 23, you shot a 182 with .5 units. On March 3, you shot a 137 with .75 units. So you have shot many of these blue numbers before— even with higher doses.
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she started acting differently after her steroid so thats why I started being cautious, March 10th is what made me scared and I ended up taking her to the vet since she was 50 one hour after her shot, I thought she was crashing
 
Christine and Bella said:
she started acting differently after her steroid so thats why I started being cautious, March 10th is what made me scared and I ended up taking her to the vet since she was 50 one hour after her shot, I thought she was crashing
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The thing to do when she did that is to first feed a teaspoon of either her regular food or a medium carb food (between 10 and 15 percent carbs) and to test in 15-20 minutes. Then if she actually does drop below 50, you feed a teaspoon of HC food like Fancy Feast Gravy Lover’s food and to test again in 15-20 minutes. Repeat this procedure as often as necessary. As the BG rises you extend the time between tests and you also switch back down to regular LC wet food.

You don’t have anything written in the comments section of your spreadsheet so I can’t tell what was going on, what you did or fed her or anything so it’s not possible to interpret what was going on.
 
Christine and Bella said:
I noticed she seemed to be more sensitive to insulin after she got off of her steroid
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Well, steroids do raise blood glucose. Her numbers should have gone down after she was off the steroid. That is what we would expect to see happen. Why was she taking an oral steroid? Really, steroids are to be avoided in diabetic cats if at all possible. If it was for her asthma then it’s probably due to needing a higher dose of Flixotide. 250 mcg strength with a frequency of two puffs in the morning (shaking the Flixotide inhaler vigorously between puffs) and two puffs again in the evening is the maximum dose. Many cats get this dose. For those who still have occasional attacks, an Albuterol inhaler should be kept on hand for emergencies.
 
I can’t even tell when she was taking the pred or when she stopped taking it. This is important information and needs to be written on the spreadsheet. It needs to be on a whole row going across the spreadsheet horizontally.
 
And I am not trying to be mean or dump too much on you. It’s just important to have as much detail in the SS as possible. I think we can do a little better job of managing her numbers. We need to try to keep her out of those reds and blacks as much as possible… and hopefully the pinks too. Consistently giving her insulin is the best thing to do — knowing that if you are with her and can monitor the cycle and can feed her and steer her numbers then you are in control of the cycle and can keep her safe.

If she doesn’t start to have some green soon then we should talk about increasing back up to .5 units. Even with the occasional lower green we still have the option to not reduce the dose. We need to look at the overall pattern of the numbers and not necessarily reduce just with a single lower green. If it happens repeatedly, then we would reconsider.
 
How are you doing, Christine? Are you okay? How is Bella?

I understand what a struggle it is. I went through it with a high dose cat who required over 40 units of insulin and an additional supplemental kind of short acting insulin given to help lower numbers and an additional medication to treat his pituitary tumor that caused him to be insulin resistant. I am not unsympathetic to your struggles with Bella.

I didn’t see any numbers on her spreadsheet when I looked in to see how she was doing.
 
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