Hello to all...Bully was dx'd with DM this past Saturday

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Bully's Mom

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confused_cat Poor kid didn't know he was sick...didn't act like it either until I noticed all the water that was being consumed and all the peeing that was going on. I probably would have shrugged it off as "older" cat behavior (Bully is 12 years old), if it wasn't for the fact that I went through the same thing in January when I was newly diagnosed with type II diabetes. Bully was also losing a lot of weight. He was always a big kitty, but his weight loss worried me more so than the water/peeing episodes, so I called my vet to get him in, and sure enough it was diabetes. I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed all weekend long. What food to buy, where to get him his own meter/test strips, how much will his insulin cost, will he let me test his ears or give him injections? He is a pretty mild-tempered boy and loves attention, so I figure insulin shots won't be so bad. I tried to do an ear test and found out that he does not like his ears touched at all, but I managed to get it done anyway. ;-) Stupidly, I used my own meter and scewed my average, but his glucose level was 436! He will be on the PZI - U40 with 1 unit twice a day. The only thing I am worried over is that I work four days a week from 6:30 am to 6:30 pm and won't be able to watch him to see how he reacts to the insulin. Should I wait until the weekend to start him on it when I have three days off in a row?

If I could offer any advice from being diabetic myself it would be that "stress" will spike the test reading a great deal, so try to keep your cat as calm and comfortable as possible prior to testing. I'm really surprised at how cats behave like humans where diabetes is concerned. Wish me luck and please pray for Bully. Thanks.
 
PZI is a good mild insulin. We like to start at .5 to one unit as a starting dose.

I can understand your hesitation to starting insulin when you won't be around. You could start with wet low carb food which might bring down the numbers and start insulin on the weekend. What are you feeding now?

Or you could start at night and get up 6 hours after the shot to get an idea of how it is working.
 
Welcome to the board!

Most cats get used to the ear pokes- we bribe with treats :lol: . Most cats will do anything for a treat- even mine! It does take a little while for the ear to learn how to bleed, so that is the hard part, just try to warm it up first really well. An alternative spot is the paws but I haven't even attempted that with my cat. Keeping calm is hard to do at the beginning but it does get easier once the routine is set- give it two weeks and you will look back and laugh about the difficulties at the first.

And you know about diabetes with going through it yourself and you know the importance of low carbs for Bully- wet food is a good change but a suggestion here is that if you aren't giving insulin it is okay to change to food right away. If you are giving insulin already you need to change gradually and test frequently as some cats are carb sensitive and drop fast once they are taken away.

And Bully is still a spring kitty compared to my Sneakers- she is 16 going on 17 this summer :-D .
 
I just wanted to say , YOU CAN DO THIS! The board will be a huge help and Bully wll be fine. My Jimmy was dianosed 2 yrs ago. He just had his 15th bday and is a happy regulated kitty.
 
Thanks to all for the replies and support. Week 2: I've been giving Bully his insulin injections for a week now - 1 unit twice a day, every 12 hours, but it didn't seem to be lowering his glucose levels so the Vet said to go ahead and give him 2 units twice a day but do the test prior to the insulin injections to make sure it wasn't too low before giving him the higher dose of insulin.

He literally has a hissy fit when I try to touch his ears though. He fights me every step of the way. He is a very smart cat. I sit with him and pet him and coo to him, but as soon as I try to rub his ears he seems to know something is up and starts fighting me. He will bat my hand away and try to jump off my lap. I've tried to put him on the bathroom counter and that didn't work either. While I've been able to get his ear stick done a couple of times, the readings have been all over the place - from 428 to 381 to 425 to 398 to 91 to 526, etc. I have no idea if the insulin is working or not because he gets too stressed out over the ear stick business. I know his sugar spikes due to the stress. I'm confident in doing the stick - I use to give them to people as a medical assistant. While he loves his treats, he is not easy to fool. He will ignore the treats if he knows the ear stick follows. He doesn't seem to care much about the insulin injection. He lets me give those without a fuss.

I'm at my wits end already with the testing. It doesn't do my glucose levels any good to stress out either. :YMSIGH:
 
Definitely as suggested above, give dm friendly treats so that he associates something good and tasty with the pokes.

Our guy hated to be poked at first. He never liked to be held down even before we had to start testing. I had to use the kitty burrito technique the first weekend we started testing and then always rewarded with a treat after. Now he just sits in his bed while we test him and he even purrs while we do it. We've only been doing this since the end of May. It will get better for you!
 
The kitty burrito was the secret for us too. We wrapped him up in a towel with only his head showing.

What are you feeding? With Oliver changing to wet low carb he went down 100 points overnight. Even a few pieces of dry can make a big difference in bg levels.

Also, we do advise increasing by .5 rather than a full unit. It is easy to go over a dose that might have worked well.
 
My Vet has me feeding Bully both wet food (Fancy Feast Classic) and Purina DM dry. The dry is because I'm not home 12 hours out of the day and she wanted him to be able to continue his grazing as needed so he doesn't go hypoglycemic while I'm not home. He has cut down eating dry food on his own. I finally got a few good ear sticks in using the kitty burrito technique - he still hates it and will shake his head or ear, splattering the precious drop everywhere. I really have no idea what his real glucose number might be since he gets so stress out prior to the stick, which I know can spike the number, but his last stick was 370. I know that is high, but in reality it is way lower then the 600 something that the vet first told me when he was diagnosed. I always give him kitty treats after an ear stick, whether the stick worked or not. I am giving him Feline Greenies - mostly for dental purposes, but he loves them. Treats or not, he still doesn't buy the ear sticking. Also...my Vet increased his insulin from 1 unit a day to 2 and his numbers are still not really dropping significantly. They are usually around 415 six hours after the injection of insulin. Yesterday I got a reading of 370, two hours after his insulin. Has anyone tried that Dia-IonX?
 
If he is eager to go all wet, I would encourage it! Lots of us freeze the wet food and leave it out for them to graze on. (I use a silicone cupcake pan that just fits a Fancy Feast can.) I also love my automatic feeder - the PetSafe5 - it lets me program it so he can snack when I would like him to. Any a few nibbles of dry will bring up the numbers and that does include the dental treats. The vet who often posts here really discounts any benefit from the dry dental treats. Cats swallow their food so it doesn't scrape the teeth, any more than eating stale cookies will help us keep our teeth clean. :-D Have you read Dr. Lisa's website? She has great info on dry food and dental techniques: www.catinfo.org Here are some ideas for lo carb treats: Lo carb treats
[url=http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=9172]Lo carb treats[/url] My cat loves Bonito flakes and PureBites.

Anytime he jerks his head, get a drop of the blood on your fingernail. You can test from there.

The numbers are likely to remain high until the dry is all gone. Once removed, you need to monitor carefully as they can really drastically reduce. Then you may need to reduce the dose by the next shot. We encourage raising the dose only by .25 or .5 units. If you raise by a whole unit, you may go over his ideal dose.
 
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