Blue 6/11 and question about tomorrow

[Alexia and Blue]

AMPS 342- 1u
+6 182
PMPS 315- 1u

I was actually able to catch him peeing and stuck a ketone strip in there! We came up negative! And he didn't even seem to notice, so first ketone test is a success!

I have a question and concern about tomorrow and Sunday. I work 12-8 tomorrow. Now my vet told me that it was okay to give the shots within 11-13 hours. Now it is 7:30pm here and we just got a shot. So tomorrow if we do the shot at +12.5 and when I get off work and get home it will be at +13. But I open at work the next day, so in order for me to give him the shot before work, it would have to be done at +9.5. So my question is 1. is that okay? 2. if not should I skip a shot then, and if so, which one?

Monday night I close so won't get home til 11:30-12 and my roommate was giving shots but now that we are hometesting-it has changed things a bit. What should I do on nights like that?

Just trying to see what all the options with ProZinc are since it seems like I am flying solo for a little while.

 

[Joanna & Bix (GA)]

PZI is very flexible. You can shoot early, but if as early as +9.5 I would lower the dose a little. The key thing is that you want to be sure you are past nadir - some cats nadir late, or can do so in some circumstances.

+11 isn't a big worry, but anything before +10 or so I tend to feel more cautious about. What you want to do is test for a rising #, so you get 2 tests maybe 15 minutes or so apart, and as long as the #s are rising, you know you are past peak (BG nadir, aka insulin peak) and it's safe to shoot. With an early shot the overlap will be increased (previous dose still having some effect when the new dose is kicking in), so that's why you want to decrease the dose.

The opposite works for shooting late - if you shoot later than +13 or so you have probably lost most of the overlap effect, so you may want to raise the dose a little to compensate.

It takes some experimentation & testing to figure out what works. If you expect early/late shots on a regular basis, I would just pick some starting points and collect data and see where you are. So maybe if you have to shoot at +13 regularly at night, start with 1u, and if your PSs in the morning are always higher (and if you can get in any spots test during the night to verify the nadir is higher as well that is useful), then you try raising the +13 dose to 1.2u and see if that works better. On the early shot you might start at 0.75u and see how that does.

If you have a regular pattern that is off from 12/12 more than an hour or so in either direction, you might want to try replicating the schedule over a couple days when you aren't working and can get more tests in to see what is happening and what will work well. For these coming few days though, I would probably just stick with 1u on the late shots and lower the dose some on an early shot. As time goes on you will get more data and a better feel for things, and hopefully it will get clearer what the best solution is.

p.s. I wouldnt skip shots unless there's no other choice - better to give a smaller dose to have something in their systems than to skip it altogether, assuming you are past at least the +6-+8 zone/nadir. (Sorry if this is a repeat, I typed a bunch of stuff and lost it (?) or maybe I typed it somewhere else? Not sure what happened, but anyhow, hoping I'm not saying the same thing over & over & over, lol).

 

[Nancy and Cody]

pzi is fairly flexible if you just can't stick to the 12 /12 schedule. (Some PZI folks even try to shoot 3x/day, but this requires a lot of testing/ and monitering to know that it is safe. It didn't work for me).

Every cat is different, but In general pzir starts to fade after the nadir (which can be somewhere between +4 to +8). If the numbers are clearly rising (like a 40 point increase) after about +9 you could shoot again, but you might reduce the dose depending on the PS number.

On any day that you will be home, try to get readings every couple hours so you get a picture of how his numbers change over the course of a day. Over time this will help you answer questions like you are asking here. In the mean time, it is safer to skip or reduce a shot than to overshoot when you aren't home. Although not ideal, most cats can survive high numbers for awhile.

It sounds like your schedule is very erratic. Any chance you could talk to your boss about more steady hours, so you can have a plan to work around. Changing all the time is going to make it hard on both of you.

I'm sorry I didn't read your previous post, so I hope I'm not missing anything important. So glad you home test-

 

[Alexia and Blue]

That is helpful. The problem with my job is 1. it is retail and 2. I was recently promoted to the management team, so I am last on the list of people(other managers) who get to ask for a more reliable schedule. The days that I open I can do both shots no problem, it is the days that I close that are kinda tricky. My roommate HAD no problem helping me but now that I am hometesting he isn't comfortable with that and I wouldn't want him to shot Blue without a number. My fiance is currently hiking the Appalachian Trial and once he is done with that and is in the city with me then none of this will be a problem anymore. So until then...flying solo!