Blood sugar returns to normal with only saline iv?

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HelenD

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My daughter and I have a 17.5 year old mix breed. Mother had tail but 6 of 7 kittens did not. Automatically thought Manx but then ran across pictures of Japanese bobtail and that fits her body build and temperament. Although how did a Japanese bobtail wind up running loose in the upstate of South Carolina?Her name is Curriey (blame my then high school daughter).

Curriey has always been 100% indoor cat. She has had a tendency to throw up and food had to be changed every few months. Absolutely refused wet food until the last couple of years. Very picky on wet food and will only eat stuff with fins.....nothing that quacks, clucks, baas, or moos. Dry can be any of several brands with 40+% protein. Wet we've tried just about everything and it's pretty much Fancy Feast.

At almost exactly 17 years old she started losing weight. Took her to vet around March and did bunch of bloodwork. Normal including glucose. Diagnosed IBS and possibly a gastointestinal cancer but at her age treat the IBS and see how she responded. Started on prednisone 5mg then reduced to half a tablet then to a quarter but eating started going off again and vomiting started coming back. Went back to 1/2 tablet.

We had a cruise and boarded her (only 2nd time ever) for 12 days. I was getting ready to pick pick her up this morning when the boarding facility called. That morning when they went to feed her, she was lethargic, trembling, and drooling. They transported her to the vet and we met them there. Battery of tests and result is probably diabetes but possibly pancreatitis. Glucose was in 480s. Some might be stress but symptons started before stressed. When we saw her, she was too lethargic to give a rip. Person transporting her said she only meowed a couple of time. Not her style, travel usually keeps her singing. Vet said due to age, treat as diabetes and see how she reacts.

Status call later in day indicated that they had started her on just fluids iv (no insulin) and when they retested her glucose, it had dropped to a normal 150. Doctor totally puzzled how just saline and a few hours could accomplish that and saidcshe'd never seen that happen before. But decided to progress with the diabetic treatments and monitor.

After this story of War and Peace, any ideas on why saline only would apparently reduce glucose? Could this be something else? Or just a non-standard diabetic reaction?
 
Did she have an ultrasound to diagnose the IBD. My IBD cat is on prednisolone 2.5 mg. Every other day.
How was the IBD diagnosed?

The most accurate way to diagnose diabetes is with a Fructosamine test, which will give you a value that is an average of the cat’s blood glucose over a period of about 2-3 weeks. This helps eliminate the influence of stress on a cat’s BG. I have seen my own non-diabetic cats have high blood sugar spikes at the vet due to stress - by several hundred points. I hope nobody plans to start treatment (either insulin or any other medication) for diabetes based on that one high number. I would not allow my cat to receive any diabetic treatment without a Fructosamine test verifying actual diabetes. Something caused her blood glucose to spike very high. Do they think it was pain? I guess they don’t think it was infection if her bloodwork didn’t indicate signs of infection. Was pancreatitis ruled out. That would require a specific blood test. Do you have copies of the bloodwork you can share?
 
And now that I said all that… I just wanted to add that I am really sorry that you had this very scary experience with your precious cat! That was a real nightmare. I hope she’s feeling a lot better now?
 
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