injecting potassium chloride into sub-q - need help.

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Michelle and Doodle

Michelle and Doodle

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Doodle has low potassium due to hyperaldosteronism.
I have finally talked my vet into letting me add Potassium Chloride to his nightly sub-q fluids to try to ease the burden of getting it in him orally. She has been resistant to the idea because she's convinced it will sting too much - and while I of course don't want to hurt him, I also don't want him to die because I can't get enough in him... I have ordered this 10ml vial of Potassium Chloride Injectable from thriving pets -- it has 2MeQ per ml.
http://www.thrivingpets.com/index.php/p ... -vial.html

Unfortunately my vet is out of town for the next 10 days and I'm not sure how to do this. I am assuming that if the vial is 10ml and each ml has 2MeQ - then the entire vial equals 20MeQ - so it seems that I would inject the entire vial into a 1000ml bag of fluids thereby administering 2MeQ per 100ml *whew*
Does that seem right?
I'm a little nervous.
Any help would be much appreciated.
 
You have it right. If you inject the whole 10 ml into a 1000 ml bag you will have essentially have a concentration of 2MeQ per 1000 ml. If you want to be exact, you would have to remove 10 ml of fluid from the back before you inject the Potassium Chloride into the bag. However, that is not really necessary.
 
Wish I could help, my vet put it right in our bag for us. She did tell me to massage the scruff while giving the fluids (where the needle is) to help get the fluids dispersed faster. Not sure if she was worried about stinging Tucker, but he doesn't like these subq fluids like he did the ones without the potassium. Keeping him happy with treats to eat the entire time.
 
Use a syringe to accurately measure the 10 ml. When I used to add this to Witn's fluids I found that each bottle actually contains more that 10 ml. My vet told me to only add the 10 ml, not the whole bottle.
 
thank you! thank you!
I do have a couple of 10ml syringes so I will definitely use them to make sure I measure the correct amount.
I'm assuming you can't re-use the syringes - even though they aren't injecting into skin. Am I right?

Jennifer, I wonder if Tucker doesn't like his fluids now because of the potassium. ??
It's good that he can be distracted though :)
 
Tucker is a little cranky right now in general, still not feeling that great.

His skin is also getting thinner as he's aging, so I can't promise that it's the potassium or just the fluids that bother him. Before this he hasn't had fluids since his last CP flare earlier in the year.

Some freeze dried chicken in front of him and he's fine with it.
 
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