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Jennifer DeJonghe

Jennifer DeJonghe

Member Since 2022
Hello,
I have Nebula (age 4). She was diagnosed last Fall and after some false starts from me she's been consistently on home testing and Lantus since January. She's on all wet food now (FF and wellness pates). I do sometimes give her Dr. Elsey's Dry Protein, mostly as treats. Prior to diagnosis she was eating half wet and half dry, but the dry was fairly low carb (just barely over the line). She had no obvious risk factors that I can think of. Last fall she started showing the classic symptoms, (excessive thirst and urination, weight loss), and also just wasn't herself (tired, moody). She was confirmed diabetic at my vet, who prescribed her Lantus and encouraged home testing.

For the past month or so I've been trying to dial her into a Tight Regulation Protocol I found pinned in this group. I have a spreadsheet in use that I got from a Facebook group I was in prior to joining this group. One question I have is - is the spreadsheet I have in use similar enough to the ones here that I can keep using it (it should be linked in my signature if I did it right)? Also, her numbers have looked really good the last few days, and she's more energetic than ever. I find that she is super high energy and playful when under 100/ in the low 100s, although of course I still get a little nervous holding dose and shooting with those lower numbers. Also she's been hard to regulate, only a week ago I was getting really high numbers for no reason I could determine. I just did a dose reduction (2.25 to 2.00 starting yesterday) and would welcome any other thoughts on Nebula. (I realize I should start using the group for Lantus, but wanted to do a welcome post here).
Thank you! I have already learned a lot from my time lurking here.
 
hi and welcome to the group! Nebula is adorable! So young to have FD, hopefully it gives a good chance at regulation or even more.

I highly recommend Tight Regulation and Lantus, they got my boy into diabetic remission and I will forever be grateful. Your spreadsheet looks a lot like the one used here but my understanding is that the one from the FB group is different. So you may need to start a new spreadsheet here.

If following TR, the AMPS of 48 you got the other day would be a no-shoot situation if I recall correctly. And three times in the past few days under 50 whoa! That's a little scary imo do you have a hypo kit on hand? (honey, corn syrup, high-carb cat foods with gravy)
 
Hi and welcome to the forum Jennifer and Nebula
We like you to use our spreadsheet if possible as the spreadsheet from other groups can crash on this forum. I’ll tag @Bandit's Mom to change it over for you. She will contact you.
Your SS says an all wet diet but your signature says some dry food. If you are feeding any dry food at all (even low carb dry food) you can’t do the TR protocol. To do that you must be feeding a completely wet food diet.
If you can’t eliminate the dry, you will need to do the SLGS dosing method.

A couple of observations looking at your SS…
You don’t have any tests in at all during the PM cycles. A lot can happen in that 12 hours so I would really recommend you get at least one test in during the pm cycle. Even a before bed test is a good idea. If that test is lower than the preshot BG I would set the alarm and get up and test it again an hour or two later to see how much lower it has dropped.

I can see you gave insulin with a preshot of 48 on the 4/9… we don’t recommend at all for anyone to shoot under 50. You either skip, or stall and wait for the BG to rise to a safe level.
Also you didn’t take the reduction in dose when Nebula dropped to 39 on 4/7. Please always take a reduction if the BG drops under 50 with TR or 90 with SLGS.

The higher numbers you mention could well have been from bouncing from lower numbers in the pm cycles. If you can start getting some tests in during the pm cycle we will be able to see why the higher numbness are appearing.

Don’t move over to the Lantus group yet until we get you sorted out with everything. We like you to start here and when everything is sorted out we will let you know when to start posting on the Lantus page. :)
Very glad you find us. We are happy to answer any questions
 
Ok, thanks! I actually did stall the day I did the preshot on 4/9 - it is indicated in the notes to the right in that spreadsheet, I waited an hour until her numbers got up into the 60s and did a slightly reduced dose. I didn't know how to indicate that on the sheet other than to put it in the notes. I do have a hypo kit, and have the ability to work from home on any day that I'm worried about her levels to do extra testing.
Yes I probably should have lowered on 4/7, I have been trying the Tilly protocol and she was so close to the borderline (Tilly says drop if at 40 and she was at 39) but I wasn't as certain about it, especially since that number looked so anomalous with relatively higher numbers on either side. Also, for what it is worth, Nebula has been acting happier than ever with these lower numbers, and hasn't shown any negative signs at those lower readings, though they scare the heck out of me.

I give Dr. Elsey's dry as treats when doing glucose testing or when giving my other cats treats (I have three cats total) which is why I worded it that way. But I could cut out the elseys if you think it would help. It took me weeks to get her to not fight me on the glucose testing (I tried every trick in the book, but she would fight and howl and spit), but she's been doing great lately. I really don't know what finally worked other than her mood in general has been much better.
 
Have you tried freeze dried treats?

I could be wrong but you don’t want to stall for longer than 20 minutes. Waiting an hour to give the insulin is probably not advisable I think, but I’ll let other correct me if I’m mistaken.

Welcome and you’re doing really great already so kudos to you!!
 
Welcome to FDMB!

You might want to use the TR version we use here vs. Tilly. To be honest, I find the instructions from the Tilly group to be a bit confusing and I've been around long enough to have been familiar with the original version from the group.

I agree with Bron on both counts. You'll need to ditch any dry food in order to follow TR. And, you will need to get at the minimum, one PM cycle test. Without the PM information, you're missing half of your data and could easily miss the need for a dose reduction.

You can stack numbers in any cell. (If you look at my spreadsheet, you'll see what I mean.) You will need to manually color code the cell, though.
 
Thank you! I can do freeze dried @Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) . I'll quit Dr. Elsey's for treats. I was just looking for something economical, because switching three cats to wet food, plus the vet bills, did a number on my cash flow hehe. I'm guessing actual meat is allowed as a treat, too, right? Like a little bit of cooked salmon or chicken?
@Sienne and Gabby (GA) thank you - I'm not sure I understand about the stacking in a cell and I couldn't find your spreadsheet, but I tried to put two numbers in on my april 9th one... hopefully that's what you mean. I am still figuring my way around this forum. today's experiment is tagging people :). When you say to follow the TR method of this group - is it the one pinned in the Lantus board? I did get one evening test in last night. I'll try to do more of those though it is hard because I sometimes have a hard time getting back to sleep if I wake myself. One of the things I feel the TR protocols are all a little vague on is just how much to test. I feel like the answer is "as often as possible". I mentioned it already but she used to fight me just terribly when I would test her, I tried every trick in the book. Then one day I was exasperated and gave her a long stern lecture about diabetes and how I was just trying to help her feel better, and she just stared at me side eyed. I know it sounds crazy but I swear she understood because now she sits still calm as can be. So being able to test her very often with no fights still feels like a gift. Calico cats, I tell ya.
@Bron and Sheba (GA) I could also likely do my own spreadsheet, I don't want to trouble anyone. it's just the numbers copying over I'm not sure I know an easy way to do (maybe copy paste rows?) . But I could maybe manually enter the past week of data for now.
Thanks everyone!
 
Gabby's spreadsheet is on the last line of my signature ("Gabby's Lantus SS & Labs")

Any plain protein is fine as a treat. It can be cooked or raw. Cooked chicken or salmon is great. Anything that is leftovers from your dinner is good. We had one member who would but cooked shrimp for her kitty!!

With all of the dosing methods, the absolute minimum number of tests is 4 -- the two pre-shot tests and at least one additional test during the AM and PM cycles. I typically tell members to bet a "before bed" test every night that way you're going to sleep knowing your cat is in safe numbers or you're staying up to make sure that's the case. If you look at the spreadsheets of Lantus users, you'll get a good cross-section of how frequently people do (or don't) test.

I honestly do think they understand. If you read the link to Gabby's Legacy in my signature (it's #7 in the thread), I make reference to how our kitties seem to know.
 
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