? Frankie 9/5 AMPS 157 stalled and now 140. What do I do???

Status
Not open for further replies.
Sue484

Sue484

Member Since 2015
Hi. It is now 8 hours since Frankie had his evening injection and I am getting nervous about tomorrow. I have to go out from about 1pm to 6.30pm will be getting home just before his evening shot. Looking at his spreadsheet now, do you think I should give him less insulin tomorrow morning to make sure he doesn't go too low? Has he earned a reduction yet? I have an Alphatrak meter and his reading I took just now would be green on a human meter. Do I give him a bit of food now to up his blood levels a bit to see him through to amps or leave it and skip the shot entirely tomorrow morning?
 
Hi Sue - since you are following TR, the reduction point on the Alphatrak is 68. He's quite safe now. You could give him a couple of tsps of his regular low carb wet food to see if that will encourage him to surf where he is.

What + hours is 1PM to 6:30 PM? Just wondering how that relates to his cycle. Do you have an autofeeder that he uses?
 
1pm is +6, so 6.30pm would be pmps. I don't have an auto feeder. Too many cats who would I'm sure steal his food.
 
So you can get a +5.5 or +6 before you leave. Bummer on the autofeeder. If you had a separate room for him then an autofeeder might work. He may bounce tomorrow, and if he starts tomorrow red you are probably OK with the full dose. He hasn't gotten that close to the reduction point yet on this dose. His lowest is still 50+ points from being low. If he's not bouncing and low at AMPS I think you have a couple of options. You could do the normal dose and check him around +5 and give him high carb food if he's lowish. You could do another test before you leave and more high carb food. The other option is a lower dose, maybe 3.5 units.
 
Thanks @Wendy&Neko. I'm a coward so will probably opt for the lower dose but I will see where he is in 2.5 hours. I've just given him a quarter pouch of the higher end of the low carb food (7.9%)
 
The good thing is that you're finally seeing progress on this 4.0u dose. It's good to see him out of those high numbers and back in blue today.

The more practice you have with him being in normal numbers, the less it will freak you out. It's just a matter of getting used to it.
 
It is very good to see him in normal numbers and it's all thanks to you as I very nearly wrecked it. If I wasn't going out for so long tomorrow I wouldn't care and would have just gone with it, but seeing how low he was at +8 this evening, it did worry me.
 
Well, at amps he was 8.7 (157) so I stalled and 20 mins later he is 7.8 (140). What do I do, bearing in mind I will be out for the last half of this cycle??
 
Last edited:
I'm not sure I'd shoot the full dose - it looks as though he tends to nadir a little later than +6 on quite a lot of cycles. How would you feel about a reduced dose as you can monitor him through the first half? That way you'll have the option to leave him with some HC food before you have to go out if you think he might need it. I know reducing isn't ideal when he's doing so well, but he'll get back on track quickly enough and you'll know he's safe later on.
 
Your first option is to stall some more until he rises. If you do that, your next shot will be 12 hours after that. You can get back on schedule by 15 minutes a cycle or 1/2 hour once a day. The problem with stalling too long, is that without food they may continue to drop. Your second option is to shoot a reduced dose. Your third option is to skip. If you want to follow TR, you will eventually have to get used to shooting lower numbers. The cycle is usually much flatter if you shoot a lower number. Once people here have the experience and data to do so, they will shoot anything above a 68 on the Alphatrak. But since you can only monitor the first part of the cycle, I wouldn't shoot a full dose today. Wait until Frankie gives you another chance when you can monitor.

What do you feel like doing?
 
Sounds good. :) If you can get a couple of tests between his shot and when you head out just to see where he is then too that would be good - if he looks like he's heading down fairly quickly, you might want to leave him extra food out for while you won't be around to keep an eye on him. :)
 
For future reference, it looks like he is doing what we call a double dip. Some Lantus cats will do a second smaller dip towards the end of the cycle, but they don't go as low as the nadir of the main cycle.

Good luck today - I'd go back to 4 units tonight.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top