kthondragon
Member Since 2024
Hi, my wife and I are hoping to find some help here because we are starting to feel very defeated with trying to get our newly diagnosed sugar cat, Dyson (15), regulated.
Some backstory to his situation:
3/25 we took him to the vet because we noticed he was losing weight and drinking large amounts and peeing large amounts. At the vet blood work and urine work was done.
3/27 we contact the vet because we still hadn’t gotten results and vet tells us they just came in and he’s DKA and needing to go to the ER.
We bring him to the ER where he stays until 3/29 , and did seemingly very well there. They were very happy with how he had no trouble with eating and they were able to start flushing the ketones out and treating him with insulin etc as they do.
We were sent home with him on 3/29 and instructed to give him 1 unit of Vetsulin (this is what was prescribed and also what our other diabetic cat is also on at the moment) 2x daily at his meal times and to wait a few days before trying to take a curve (we know how and are able to home test).
His tests were consistently coming back “HI” which indicates the meter(an Alpha Track 2) doesn’t go up to whatever amount his glucose is at, as I’m sure you know. We even bought a new reader (an Advocate Pettest) as we were about to be out of strips for the Alpha anyways, and it had been discontinued. The next day, when the new reader arrived, he still registered HI on that one too.
We contacted the vet and they said we could try increasing his dose to 1.5u. So we did that and a few times were actually able to get readings from the meter, albeit they were over 400 every time.
During all of this he is never losing his appetite at all, but still drinking more than he should probably be and urinating larger amounts than is normal.
We took him in for his follow up appointment on 4/8 and he had gained a bit of weight back , which was good, and his belly felt better to the vet than it did on the initial visit, but he still was registering HI. We told the vet but she wanted to still keep him at the 1.5 and told us to take a curve again over the weekend (which was this past weekend), and then give her the results and we’d go from there.
Saturday we did the curve and his numbers were still almost all at the HI level. With only a few of them falling lower than that. And whenever he gets a HI reading, we can always tell by noticing he is visually more sad looking than when his numbers drop down at least into the 400s it is a noticeable change in him.
We called the vet and they said we could go ahead and do 2u, so a this last saturday's evening meal, he got 2u, which was at 10pm. He was checked before he ate and he was at HI then. He was checked again 2.5 hours later and he was at 355 which seemed great, as it was the lowest he had registered since this whole thing began.
By morning he was 594 before his insulin (9am) and then 531 on a check I did at around noon that day, a few hours after his insulin. The rest of that day anytime I checked again it was back to registering HI and he seemed sad most of the day afternoon and evening Sunday.
This morning before his shot he was still at HI , and 3.5 hours later he was again still HI.
We have made an appointment for him to have an Ultrasound tomorrow, to check for possible pancreatitis. While he was in the ER they asked if we wanted to get him an ultrasound. We asked if, in their professional opinion, they felt it was medically necessary/important for him to have at that time. They stated that they did not think so, so we replied that if at any point they felt it was medically necessary, they should perform the ultrasound without even having to contact us about it first. No ultrasound was performed, so we felt confident their stance had not changed. If they had explained to us specifically why the ultrasound was an important test, we wouldn’t have hesitated, but we didn’t want to just do a test that they said wasn’t necessary. The ER visit was already costly AND stressful for Dyson, and if there was no need to add more to both of those things, then why do so?
All that said, does anyone have any similar situation experience or any advice based on his story? We will obviously know more after the ultrasound, but we are just very frustrated not being able to help him after all this time going by already.
Some info about what he eats:
Wet food is Fancy Feast Classic pâté with freeze dried pure beef liver sprinkles on top.
Treats are only freeze dried beef and freeze dried chicken.
We try to limit dry as much as possible but we have a regulated sugar cat who really won’t eat much wet food and another non sugar cat who flat out refuses wet food. Dyson has had small amounts of the dry food here and there but we don’t leave large quantities out so that it is limited as best as possible. The dry is the Dr Elsy’s chicken.
Thanks in advance if you made it through this whole post. It’s been a struggle and any help or encouragement is much appreciated!
Some backstory to his situation:
3/25 we took him to the vet because we noticed he was losing weight and drinking large amounts and peeing large amounts. At the vet blood work and urine work was done.
3/27 we contact the vet because we still hadn’t gotten results and vet tells us they just came in and he’s DKA and needing to go to the ER.
We bring him to the ER where he stays until 3/29 , and did seemingly very well there. They were very happy with how he had no trouble with eating and they were able to start flushing the ketones out and treating him with insulin etc as they do.
We were sent home with him on 3/29 and instructed to give him 1 unit of Vetsulin (this is what was prescribed and also what our other diabetic cat is also on at the moment) 2x daily at his meal times and to wait a few days before trying to take a curve (we know how and are able to home test).
His tests were consistently coming back “HI” which indicates the meter(an Alpha Track 2) doesn’t go up to whatever amount his glucose is at, as I’m sure you know. We even bought a new reader (an Advocate Pettest) as we were about to be out of strips for the Alpha anyways, and it had been discontinued. The next day, when the new reader arrived, he still registered HI on that one too.
We contacted the vet and they said we could try increasing his dose to 1.5u. So we did that and a few times were actually able to get readings from the meter, albeit they were over 400 every time.
During all of this he is never losing his appetite at all, but still drinking more than he should probably be and urinating larger amounts than is normal.
We took him in for his follow up appointment on 4/8 and he had gained a bit of weight back , which was good, and his belly felt better to the vet than it did on the initial visit, but he still was registering HI. We told the vet but she wanted to still keep him at the 1.5 and told us to take a curve again over the weekend (which was this past weekend), and then give her the results and we’d go from there.
Saturday we did the curve and his numbers were still almost all at the HI level. With only a few of them falling lower than that. And whenever he gets a HI reading, we can always tell by noticing he is visually more sad looking than when his numbers drop down at least into the 400s it is a noticeable change in him.
We called the vet and they said we could go ahead and do 2u, so a this last saturday's evening meal, he got 2u, which was at 10pm. He was checked before he ate and he was at HI then. He was checked again 2.5 hours later and he was at 355 which seemed great, as it was the lowest he had registered since this whole thing began.
By morning he was 594 before his insulin (9am) and then 531 on a check I did at around noon that day, a few hours after his insulin. The rest of that day anytime I checked again it was back to registering HI and he seemed sad most of the day afternoon and evening Sunday.
This morning before his shot he was still at HI , and 3.5 hours later he was again still HI.
We have made an appointment for him to have an Ultrasound tomorrow, to check for possible pancreatitis. While he was in the ER they asked if we wanted to get him an ultrasound. We asked if, in their professional opinion, they felt it was medically necessary/important for him to have at that time. They stated that they did not think so, so we replied that if at any point they felt it was medically necessary, they should perform the ultrasound without even having to contact us about it first. No ultrasound was performed, so we felt confident their stance had not changed. If they had explained to us specifically why the ultrasound was an important test, we wouldn’t have hesitated, but we didn’t want to just do a test that they said wasn’t necessary. The ER visit was already costly AND stressful for Dyson, and if there was no need to add more to both of those things, then why do so?
All that said, does anyone have any similar situation experience or any advice based on his story? We will obviously know more after the ultrasound, but we are just very frustrated not being able to help him after all this time going by already.
Some info about what he eats:
Wet food is Fancy Feast Classic pâté with freeze dried pure beef liver sprinkles on top.
Treats are only freeze dried beef and freeze dried chicken.
We try to limit dry as much as possible but we have a regulated sugar cat who really won’t eat much wet food and another non sugar cat who flat out refuses wet food. Dyson has had small amounts of the dry food here and there but we don’t leave large quantities out so that it is limited as best as possible. The dry is the Dr Elsy’s chicken.
Thanks in advance if you made it through this whole post. It’s been a struggle and any help or encouragement is much appreciated!
