Danny MacDonald
Member Since 2018
Hello all!
My cat, Imogen, a 16-17 year old female, has been diagnosed with diabetes since October 2017 and has been on ProZinc. It's been more or less under control under July of this year, when she started vomiting every day and gradually stopped wanting to eat. She spent 5 days in the hospital, another couple weeks on a feeding tube, and another month of antibiotics. Through it all, except for the ER stay, I was able to keep her diabetes roughly as in control as it had been.
After a month, the vomiting started again, and I took her back in. I never learned what actually caused the issue in the first place. The vets at the hospital wanted to do a biopsy of her liver, but to me, treatment was more important than the cause, and both potential causes I was given, lymphoma or IBD, would both need roughly the same treatment (obviously if it were lymphoma, which didn't make sense to me, would need chemotherapy), so I decided to treat for IBD first.
A sidenote - I suspected that it might potentially be a food allergy that caused this. Imogen has always been a picky eater, but I used the feeding tube experience to "switch" her from Fancy Feast chicken to Wellness Core Turkey and Instinct Vennison.
I was given another month of antibiotics for her, as well as a prescription for Budesonide. While she was on the antibiotics, her blood sugar levels were manageable. But since she's been off the Clavamax, her blood sugar has been out of control. Whereas before she got tiny doses - 0.5ml to .75ml most days (averaging under 220 overall on a monthly basis), or none at all, these days even doses up to 1.5ml are completely ineffective (she's currently averaging 300 over the past 14 days).
I can't figure out what could be causing this increase after the antibiotics went away. Could they even be related? I don't know. Imogen just had a checkup at the vet, and all her liver values are normal, and the IBD appears to be under control.
I'm sad and scared and don't just want to keep giving her more and more insulin. I'm considering stopping the Budesonide for a couple of days and just seeing if it brings her down. I've had a suspicion it was an allergy to chicken (or guar gum or some other ingredient in her old food) and have considered either keeping her on her current food and stopping the Budesonide, or switching her back to her old food and keeping up the Budesonide.
Does anyone have any advice or knowledge at all about how these drugs, the food, etc interact? At this point I very much feel helpless with it all, and the phrase "well, which way do I want to kill her?" has been in my head since July. Either the diabetes is under control, or the IBD is, and finding an equilibrium for them both has proven incredibly frustrating.
If anything, thank you for reading! I'm trying my best to give my little girl the best life she can possibly have. I'll be happy to give any additional information I can.
My cat, Imogen, a 16-17 year old female, has been diagnosed with diabetes since October 2017 and has been on ProZinc. It's been more or less under control under July of this year, when she started vomiting every day and gradually stopped wanting to eat. She spent 5 days in the hospital, another couple weeks on a feeding tube, and another month of antibiotics. Through it all, except for the ER stay, I was able to keep her diabetes roughly as in control as it had been.
After a month, the vomiting started again, and I took her back in. I never learned what actually caused the issue in the first place. The vets at the hospital wanted to do a biopsy of her liver, but to me, treatment was more important than the cause, and both potential causes I was given, lymphoma or IBD, would both need roughly the same treatment (obviously if it were lymphoma, which didn't make sense to me, would need chemotherapy), so I decided to treat for IBD first.
A sidenote - I suspected that it might potentially be a food allergy that caused this. Imogen has always been a picky eater, but I used the feeding tube experience to "switch" her from Fancy Feast chicken to Wellness Core Turkey and Instinct Vennison.
I was given another month of antibiotics for her, as well as a prescription for Budesonide. While she was on the antibiotics, her blood sugar levels were manageable. But since she's been off the Clavamax, her blood sugar has been out of control. Whereas before she got tiny doses - 0.5ml to .75ml most days (averaging under 220 overall on a monthly basis), or none at all, these days even doses up to 1.5ml are completely ineffective (she's currently averaging 300 over the past 14 days).
I can't figure out what could be causing this increase after the antibiotics went away. Could they even be related? I don't know. Imogen just had a checkup at the vet, and all her liver values are normal, and the IBD appears to be under control.
I'm sad and scared and don't just want to keep giving her more and more insulin. I'm considering stopping the Budesonide for a couple of days and just seeing if it brings her down. I've had a suspicion it was an allergy to chicken (or guar gum or some other ingredient in her old food) and have considered either keeping her on her current food and stopping the Budesonide, or switching her back to her old food and keeping up the Budesonide.
Does anyone have any advice or knowledge at all about how these drugs, the food, etc interact? At this point I very much feel helpless with it all, and the phrase "well, which way do I want to kill her?" has been in my head since July. Either the diabetes is under control, or the IBD is, and finding an equilibrium for them both has proven incredibly frustrating.
If anything, thank you for reading! I'm trying my best to give my little girl the best life she can possibly have. I'll be happy to give any additional information I can.
