Have increased insulin dose a lot

Scdal

Scdal

Member Since 2020
@Bandit's Mom
I am very worried about Phoenix's insulin dose. On January 28, I got very ill with chills and a fever for about 3 days. I had a hard time getting out of bed to even feed Phoenix and give him his insulin.

On January 29th & 30th, I was really ill, Phoenix's BG dropped to 71. He has a habit of dropping fast and I was too ill to get up to keep checking his BG so I decreased his insulin dose to try to raise his BG. This worked okay and his BG stayed pretty good for about a week.

For the last couple of weeks, Phoenix's BG has gone really high. I have increased his dose from 8 up to 10.5 units today. Did I cause this by draining his insulin depot? I am getting worried because his BG is not dropping much even when I increase his insulin. Any advice would really be appreciated.
 
Hi Susan. I hope you are feeling lots better by now. It looks like you didn’t decrease his depot too much - I mean you didn’t give him a huge reduction. But anyway, by now he would have refilled any loss of depot for sure.

I am not sure why lately you have been giving Phoenix whole unit increases. That’s too much to increase all at once. Even when doing TR, we only increase by whole units when the dose gets to 10 units.

Any you had a string of blues yesterday on 9.5 units, but today you increased to 10.5. I think you are taking things too fast. Also, I see he was, in 2021, on a pretty high dose at one point (higher than now). Cats insulin needs do change over time and I don't think it's because of the time when you were ill. Your decreases were not that dramatic.
 
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And I am a little confused, sorry. Your spreadsheet for 2022 says you are SLGS (2021 says TR). Your signature says TR. But you have been increasing every 6 cycles lately, which is TR. You test plenty to do TR, but I just want to understand.
 
How is Phoenix acting/behaving? He seem healthy to you? Doing the usual 5 P's? (peeing, pooing, purring, preening, playing). He still eating the same foods? Just wondering if there's another reason his dose needs have changed. Been 10+ days since he last saw green, so probably a bit of glucose toxicity in there meaning he'd need a higher dose, though I agree with Suzanne that you jumped up a bit and should have taken 0.5 unit increases, especially with recent greens.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
How is Phoenix acting/behaving? He seem healthy to you? Doing the usual 5 P's? (peeing, pooing, purring, preening, playing). He still eating the same foods? Just wondering if there's another reason his dose needs have changed. Been 10+ days since he last saw green, so probably a bit of glucose toxicity in there meaning he'd need a higher dose, though I agree with Suzanne that you jumped up a bit and should have taken 0.5 unit increases, especially with recent greens.
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Phoenix seems to be acting okay. He has been peeing a little more than usual but with his BG being high, that might be the reason. Since I have raised his dose to 10.5 should I continue with this or reduce the dose? Phoenix is on TR. I thought anything over 8 units was supposed to be increased by 1 unit.

I was so happy that he was maintaining 7 to 8 units for many months and now this. I am feeling fine but I would rather be sick than have Phoenix's BG go high. I wish I had never decreased his insulin when I was sick. I will never do that again.
 
We go up by 1 unit at 10 units total dose. Think of the increase as being around 10% of the total dose.

Scdal said:
I wish I had never decreased his insulin when I was sick. I will never do that again.
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We have a saying here, well, a couple of them. First is that you have to take care of you so that you can take care of your cat. Second, better high for a few cycles than him going low when you can't monitor. He will get over this, none the worse for wear. If you are too sick to monitor, reducing the dose was absolutely the right thing to do.
 
Scdal said:
Phoenix seems to be acting okay. He has been peeing a little more than usual but with his BG being high, that might be the reason. Since I have raised his dose to 10.5 should I continue with this or reduce the dose? Phoenix is on TR. I thought anything over 8 units was supposed to be increased by 1 unit.

I was so happy that he was maintaining 7 to 8 units for many months and now this. I am feeling fine but I would rather be sick than have Phoenix's BG go high. I wish I had never decreased his insulin when I was sick. I will never do that again.
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dont get down on yourself. Im Phoenix will be ok with a lil set back. I cannot advise on dose. But i can tell you to be nice to yourself. you were sick, life happens like that. just try and do the smaller soe movements from now on. Im so glad you are feeling better! If Phoenix is acting fine, im sure you will get him back on the right track with the help of the board.
:bighug:
 
Wendy&Neko said:
We go up by 1 unit at 10 units total dose. Think of the increase as being around 10% of the total dose.


We have a saying here, well, a couple of them. First is that you have to take care of you so that you can take care of your cat. Second, better high for a few cycles than him going low when you can't monitor. He will get over this, none the worse for wear. If you are too sick to monitor, reducing the dose was absolutely the right thing to do.
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Thanks to all of you for your help today. At Phoenix's PMPS, I reduced his dose down to 10 units. I will see how this works. Have a good evening.
 
Scdal said:
Phoenix seems to be acting okay. He has been peeing a little more than usual but with his BG being high, that might be the reason. Since I have raised his dose to 10.5 should I continue with this or reduce the dose? Phoenix is on TR. I thought anything over 8 units was supposed to be increased by 1 unit.

I was so happy that he was maintaining 7 to 8 units for many months and now this. I am feeling fine but I would rather be sick than have Phoenix's BG go high. I wish I had never decreased his insulin when I was sick. I will never do that again.
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Susan, you had to keep him safe. You absolutely did the right thing! This is not all because of when you were sick. I honestly don’t believe that. And I have seen a lot of cats get seriously off track with their BG because of mistakes (which yours was not!) or misunderstandings or work schedules or vacation doses and I have seen those cats get back on track. Phoenix needs a little more time perhaps. You did right to protect him when you were much too sick to monitor him. Don’t beat yourself up when you acted sensibly and out of love for Phoenix! :bighug:
 
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