how much insulin is 'abnormal'??

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alexia&wednesday

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Hi,

I am currently trying to stabilize my cat after she was diagnosed 11/24/09. She was stable on 1U for a short while, then has slowly started having climbing numbers.
I currently have her on 2.5U BID. She is still in the 300s, sometimes goes into the low 400s (mostly when she grabs a few bites of the other cats' food, or when I am an hour late dosing).

I am just curious, because I notice most people with controlled cats only give 1U or less.

When should I start to worry about this? I am trying to take everyone's advice that 'this is a marathon, not a sprint'....but I have continually increased her insulin with very very little improvement.

Help!

- Alexia and Wednesday
 
Your spreadsheet shows essentially flat (very little decrease) of Wednesday's BGs. This frequently indicates rebound because too much insulin is being given. I also not that the spreadsheet does not include any info at 1 unit. I would test urine for ketones and reduce dose to 1 unit bid and continue to check for ketones.
 
I have wondered the same!

I have been testing for ketones. There have been none...

There is a reason why her insulin increased, after she was stable on 1U (her diet had to change to a non-DM diet for ~1 month, it increased her BG, so insulin dose was increased, and has stayed that way since she is off her 'bad' diet).

No numbers were recorded for when she was on the 1U because I did not have a chart then.

Thanks for the help. I feel totally lost here....

- A & W
 
> There is a reason why her insulin increased, after she was stable on 1U
> (her diet had to change to a non-DM diet for ~1 month, it increased her
> BG, so insulin dose was increased, and has stayed that way since she is
> off her 'bad' diet).

Okay, couple of things. You say you changed the diet from a non-DM diet -- you mean that you were feeding Prescription Diet D/M, then changed to something else which needed a larger insulin dose? Because D/M is actually not good for diabetics; if you switched from it to something else, then it's possible that you should have decreased the insulin dose (unless you switched to something worse). Since too much insulin *and* too little insulin can cause high BG levels, it's possible that you switched the insulin the wrong way. What type of food are you currently feeding, and is it dry, canned or raw?

Secondly, when you increased the dose from 1 unit, how much did you increase it by? Sometimes folks increase it by whole units and miss their optimal dose. And how long did you give the increased dose to settle in before increasing it again? Because again, sometimes folks increase the dose too quickly and miss the optimal dose.

-- Jean and her Gwyn
 
I use lantus.

- Her diet was changed to ID, because after she got out of the hospital she was vomiting, and our vet was worried if she didn't keep food down she would go back into DKA. So, we started her on this ID stuff and kept her on it for way too long, in my opinion. Needed to transition her to wet food, since she was NEVER a wet food cat! So, we used this IS food to stop her from vomiting and since she was eating it like crazy (the ID wet food), we started transitioning her to the new welness wet food, slowly. However, her numbers stayed high, because the ID wet was super high in carbs.

- I increased her lantus by 0.5 U at a time, probably too fast. Stopped at 2U which has been the stable dose for a few weeks now. But numbers are not going anywhere. I thought maybe had over shot, but after getting some advice here I thought her dose actually needed to be increased.
I did that over the last week, but the numbers are hardly moving.

- Currently all she eats is Wellness grain-free wet food.

- A & W
 
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