Feeling overwhelmed by feline diabetes diagnosis

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edc5036

Member Since 2021
I adopted my beautiful cat Piglet around 3.5 years ago. She's a 9 year old female and overweight (13.2 lb)

Yesterday my vet diagnosed her with feline diabetes. Her recent trips to the vet started because of a couple white bumps on her ear that wouldn't go away. The vet was concerned these were cancerous so we had just finished up some steroid injections before this recent visit.

I'm about to go pick up her insulin and shots. The vet didn't say anything about different brands. Her blood glucose came in at 437 mg/dL and urinalysis showed 1000 mg/dL. She does get extremely nervous/agitated in the car which is a concern for the future and because I've read it can affect those readings. All of her other blood work and urinalysis came back normal--including a negative for ketones but one of the first things I learned browsing here is that I should pick up some ketostix for home testing on that front.

I've also already switched her to a low carb diet. She still seems very happy and is showing normal behavior here at home. One red flag about this vet is he told me changing her diet wouldn't affect anything with regards to the diabetes which goes against everything I have read about the subject.

The vet also perscribed 2x/week Chlorambucil (Leukeran) as a follow up to the steroid. Will this be fine to administer along with the insulin?

I'm sure I will have many more questions down the line but for now I just wanted to make this initial post and get any advice from the community on what I should do from here. I am considering getting a second vet opinion due to this one's ignorance of dietary effects on feline diabetes, but this is a well-respected vet office in my area.

I hope this is the right forum for this and thanks so much for reading.
 
The vet also perscribed 2x/week Chlorambucil (Leukeran) as a follow up to the steroi
Chlorambucil is usually given for small-cell, intestinal lymphoma, sometimes for IDB and sometimes for cutaneous (in the skin) mast-cell tumors. The latter I would not call white bumps. Cutaneous mast-cell tumors are easily diagnosed by microscopic examination of a fine-needle aspirate (after staining).

A steroid injection can cause diabetes if cat is prone to it.

What type of insulin?
I would stay away from Vetsulin (Caninsulin) it is for dags and does not last long enough in cats. Good insullins is the per ProZinc and the human insulin Levemir, and Lantus (glargine) (and its biosimilar ones.) Semglee is a biosimilar Lantus and is the least expensive on a per unit basis. https://www.goodrx.com/semglee
 
Did your vet say what the chlorambucil/Leukeran was supposed to be treating? If in the US (guessing by the blood sugar readings), you can get generic chlorambucil compounded for fairly cheap. The Leukeran brand is very expensive there. The side effects of chlorambucil can be nausea. I would get a prescription for ondansetron (Zofran) to help with the nausea. The problem with nausea is kitty might not want to eat, and you need her to eat if you are giving insulin.

If you are worried about stress impacting her blood sugars, you can get the vet to run a Fructosamine test, which will give you the average over a couple weeks. Was the glucose in urine also negative? You might want to also pick up a cheap blood glucose meter to home test her sugars. We can help you get started on that. Cats that get diabetes from steroid shots have a good chance of going into diabetic remission. Home blood testing will keep Piglet safe.
 
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