Dosing Advice

jason bellamy

jason bellamy

Member
First of all thanks to everyone here, we switched Francis from the 1x day shot the vet had us giving him and off the kidney rx diet the vet had him on. The numbers have been alot better getting out of the reds and blacks for the most part now. Still noticing lately that the pmps is a little low on some days to give a shot. Tried to reduce am shot and make up the difference pm but several of the days he's only getting 1 unit am(much better than the 6 units am he was up to). Do i need to switch needles now? From what I've read you can more fine tune dosage with the u-100, but there are multiple people in the household who take care of him and I'm concerned about others not understanding the conversion.
 
There is a chart for doing the conversion to U-100, if you want to do that. A lot of people do that. When I was giving Mia ProZinc, I chose to stick with U-40 syringes. I had the ones with 1/2 unit markings to help me hit smaller doses, but for anything between the 1/2s, I had to just do it by sight.

Do you think you could get some evening mid-cycle testing in? Maybe just a test before bed or occasionally set an alarm for some point in the night or do it if you get up to use the bathroom? :)
 
FurBabiesMama said:
There is a chart for doing the conversion to U-100, if you want to do that. A lot of people do that. When I was giving Mia ProZinc, I chose to stick with U-40 syringes. I had the ones with 1/2 unit markings to help me hit smaller doses, but for anything between the 1/2s, I had to just do it by sight.

Do you think you could get some evening mid-cycle testing in? Maybe just a test before bed or occasionally set an alarm for some point in the night or do it if you get up to use the bathroom? :)
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I should be able to get some evening testing in just won't likely be at nadir. will have to look for a source of the half unit u-40s. that may be a better option since as i said he has several caregivers and i want to take as much confusion as i can out of it. Currently I am scheduled off on Saturday so am planning a full curve then. Other than the evening testing does his ss appear to be being done properly?
 
You're getting some nice numbers. Here are some suggestions and comments:
  • try getting used to fractional doses because increasing and decreasing by 1 u at this low dose range represents significant % differences in dose
  • if you have too many evening PSs that are too low to give insulin try reducing the AM dose so you have a "shootable" PMPS
  • it's best to find a decent dose and give it consistently AM and PM rather than increasing or decreasing based on the PS number. Maybe try 2 u both AM and PM for now. Altering dose in response to PS usually doesn't work very well to stabilize BGs.
  • if the middle cycle numbers at a dose of 2 u are still mid to high blues increase to 2.25 u both AM and PM, not to 3 u
  • aim to get a before bed test as often as possible to get an idea of what his night time cycle is like
  • if you scatter the BG tests over different times in a cycle as you've been doing AND add in an evening test there's generally no need to do a curve.
 
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Oh goodness. Yes, you can give fractional doses even on u40 syringes. If you have mutliple caregivers one strategy is to draw up some colored water into a syringe and have them compare their syringe to the colored water syringe to make sure everyone is understanding what a 0.75 or 0.5 dose looks like.

I agree with Kris that changing the dose by full units is making this harder than it needs to be, and is honestly a bit dangerous. I would suggest reading the stickies at the top of the prozinc forum to learn a little about the approach we use here.

It looks like your kitty has a good chance of remission if you can walk the dose down carefully. We are happy to help!
 
monoject-pet-syringes-sy8881500042.jpg
So i was looking into the u-100 syringes to more accurately do a fractional dose and i was searching to find the conversion chart. someone commenter that the u-100 goes up to 30 units and the u-40 goes to 12 units. the u-40 syringes sent home from the vet the last marking is for 20 units then their is a bold line just about 1 unit past the 20 unit mark. I think this is where my problem may be. the scale of these syringes is so large that a fractional dose is very hard to read.
 

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jason bellamy said:
monoject-pet-syringes-sy8881500042.jpg
So i was looking into the u-100 syringes to more accurately do a fractional dose and i was searching to find the conversion chart. someone commenter that the u-100 goes up to 30 units and the u-40 goes to 12 units. the u-40 syringes sent home from the vet the last marking is for 20 units then their is a bold line just about 1 unit past the 20 unit mark. I think this is where my problem may be. the scale of these syringes is so large that a fractional dose is very hard to read.
Click to expand...
That just means he gave you a 0.5 capacity syringe. If you get a 0.3 capacity syringe a unit amount is still the same but the barrel size is different. So a 0.3 syringe holds only 12 units.... More than enough for your cat And a little easier to see the smaller doses.
 
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