Glucose Curve?

[Rachel]

Hello everyone! My sweet Gypsy has a vet visit tomorrow to have a glucose curve done. She was diagnosed 2 weeks ago and has been on insulin and low carb diet since. Can any if you give me some info on the glucose curve? What kind of info will it give me? I was so overwhelmed when this happened that I didn't get much info about it before. What do they do? Any info appreciated!

 

[Blue]

Hello everyone! My sweet Gypsy has a vet visit tomorrow to have a glucose curve done. She was diagnosed 2 weeks ago and has been on insulin and low carb diet since. Can any if you give me some info on the glucose curve? What kind of info will it give me? I was so overwhelmed when this happened that I didn't get much info about it before. What do they do? Any info appreciated!

The glucose curve done at the vet office is useless... it's a waste of your money.

Just pick up a blood glucose meter, test strips, and lancets at the pharmacy and test your cat at home.
The numbers that are gained at the vet office will be skewed because cats are stressed at the vet office, so their BG numbers will be higher. The vet will say for you to give a higher dose at home, based on falsely high numbers at the vet office, and when you give the higher dose at home, you may end up with a cat who drops too low and you end up in the ER.

What insulin are you using, what dose, and what food are you feeding?
You can pick up one of the Relion meters at Walmart if you are in the US, or most other meters are good as well, like the Bayer contour, the OneTouch meters, and the Accu-Chek meters.

Test your cat at home where you are both comfortable, and you will get true numbers on which to base your dosing.

For the curve at the vet office, ask them what time the cat had insulin, how much, and what BG numbers they got and at what times were those tests.

 

[Wendy&Tiggy(GA)]

Hello there

For now its fine to do a glucose curve while you get up to speed on everything but as Blue said, if you do home testing then future curves arent needed- save you some money. In fact they are inaccurate as the cat is so stressed at the vet its blood sugar is high and the dose of insulin they need is higher than they would at home. My vet told me he wouldnt do one for that reason!

What they do - is give your cat insulin and measure him to see how low he goes to see how much he needs. But as I said that can be inaccurate.

Anyway what you will get - is confirmation on diagnosis and the dose of insulin you need. When you go in, they should show you how to give the shot. Ask them about home testing but dont buy their pet meter - we can advise cheaper and almost as good human meters!.

I would recommend when you come home you let us know what the insulin and dose is and we can advise if its too much or not and whether a lower starting dose would be safer. I would also advise you pick up a meter to test his blood - this will give you and them more data and help keep your cat safe.

Wendy

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

Hi Rachel and extra sweet Gypsy!! Welcome to the FDMB!

In direct answer to your question, a "curve" is when blood glucose readings are taken every 2 hours (usually) for a full 12 hour cycle. That being said, Blue is totally correct in saying that the results you get from the vet are pretty much useless due to the fact that the tests are done when the cat is "under stress". Stress can elevate the number by up to 200 points.

If your vet were to do a curve and find that Gypsy's blood glucose never went below 250, he might advise to to increase the dose of Pro Zinc. When you return home, the number could be as low as 50 and that's dangerously low...and the last thing any of us want is for you to have to live with the heartbreak that the results of a severe hypo event can cause.

Are you willing to learn how to test at home? We can help you learn how,(it sounds a lot scarier than it is) and then you can do your own "curves"..and know the numbers you're getting are real numbers, not stress induced.