Dose Advice

[ladyxsuebee]

Hello! I got Dopey's numbers on the spreadsheet and was wondering if anyone had dose advice. I posted on the Lantus Board as well.

He is on Lantus, and I'm feeding him 100 % the Evo Canned Turkey & Chicken Formula.

Thanks!!

:mrgreen:

 

[Larry and Kitties]

The SS does not contain any between-shot BG since you moved to 1 unit bid. Without knowing what is happening between shots I can't give advice.

 

[ladyxsuebee]

I plan on doing a curve this weekend....As I work full time 5 days a week, I'm not able to do a between shot until the weekend......

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

I plan on doing a curve this weekend....As I work full time 5 days a week, I'm not able to do a between shot until the weekend......

Can you get some after work? I work a full and a part time job, so I tested daily at the AMPS, went to work, tested the PMPS, and then got a +4 and a +6 every night, and did a curve on the weekend. Sometimes that meant setting an alarm for the +6 and going back to bed if I wanted a full 8 hours sleep, but having that info helped me sleep better anyway!

A curve is great, but you really need to get at least the AMPS, PMPS, and a +6 every day in order to get the right dose. Daily testing seems like a pain, but believe me it's worth it when your cat is well regulated and goes into remission. It's a small investment to get a huge payback in the long run.

 

[ladyxsuebee]

I plan on doing a curve this weekend....As I work full time 5 days a week, I'm not able to do a between shot until the weekend......

Can you get some after work? I work a full and a part time job, so I tested daily at the AMPS, went to work, tested the PMPS, and then got a +4 and a +6 every night, and did a curve on the weekend. Sometimes that meant setting an alarm for the +6 and going back to bed if I wanted a full 8 hours sleep, but having that info helped me sleep better anyway!

A curve is great, but you really need to get at least the AMPS, PMPS, and a +6 every day in order to get the right dose. Daily testing seems like a pain, but believe me it's worth it when your cat is well regulated and goes into remission. It's a small investment to get a huge payback in the long run.

Julia & Sweet Bandit,

I poke him every night before his dinner. I have been trying to be better about getting his morning numbers as well. People were just telling me that I need a between # the morning and night poke and I can't do that until the weekend. Which I planned on yesterday, then his morning # was great, so I didn't get to do the curve. Guess I will do it this weekend coming up!

 

[Julia & Bandit (GA)]

I poke him every night before his dinner. I have been trying to be better about getting his morning numbers as well. People were just telling me that I need a between # the morning and night poke and I can't do that until the weekend. Which I planned on yesterday, then his morning # was great, so I didn't get to do the curve. Guess I will do it this weekend coming up!

It doesn't have to be between the morning and night poke, it can be between the night and morning poke, too! That's what I did with Bandit. Getting the preshots are necessary because they keep your kitty safe, but you also need that one in-between number a day, six hours after his pm shot, in order to see how the insulin is working. Otherwise you are dosing practically blind.

I know it seems a pain to have to get up at night to do it. I gave Bandit his shots at 7am and 7pm, and did the mid-point test at 1am, and then of course got up for work at 6am and did it all over again. Sometimes I just stayed up late and dealt with the lost sleep with naps, and sometimes I went to bed early and set an alarm to do the test, and then went right back to bed. Thank goodness the meter saves the test number, because the spreadsheet had to wait until morning. Just because I got that test in my sleep didn't mean I could read what the number was.

But think about how much easier your life will be if Dopey becomes diet-controlled like Bandit, and you don't need to give *any* shots and you only have to test once every few weeks. The only way you can this is to get that late night test nearly every day. Getting it once a week does not provide enough information to get Dopey regulated. Also, with you being gone to work all day, if Dopey is on too high a dose of insulin, it could lead to a potentially deadly hypo incident. Too much insulin looks just the same in the preshot numbers as too little insulin. Getting that late night number will also assure you that he's not going too low while you're gone at work the next day.

So please get those +6 night numbers as soon as you can! Once you have about 3 days come back and the dosing experts here can start giving you advice. Believe me, it works. There have been hundreds of cats here that have gone into remission, but I can't think of any that did it without getting that test.

Good luck and I hope you post back soon! :smile:

 

[Melanie and Smokey]

Finding time to get those tests in can be crazy! Many of Smokey's between shot tests I got were at 3am. What a tax season that was! We are so very thankful that it was only one tax season and we deal with insulin no more.

The hard thing is that Lantus is a super wonderful insulin to get a cat regulated and it has a very high success rate on getting cats off of insulin completely, but dosing adjustments are done based on the nadir - that mid-cycle point where the BG number is the lowest, never on preshot numbers because those are really where the kitty is with little to no insulin working. in order to find the nadir, we need to catch a few different spots in there because, even though its believed to usually be around +6, some kitties are sooner or later than that. Your dose could be too low right now, or you could have too high of a dose and the poor kitty is bouncing off of low midcycle numbers to hit those higher preshot numbers and an increase in insulin could be dangerous. To make dose adjustments up or down you really want a few midcycle numbers to get an idea of what Bandit is doing with that insulin before deciding if he needs more or less.