Jan 22 George Pusskins AMPS 238; newby!

Status
Not open for further replies.
RuthC

RuthC

Member Since 2012
Greetings. We are in our 18th day since beginning Lantus. I think things are going ok, but would appreciate hearing opinions from anybody who has time to glance at my spreadsheet. The vet initially advised shooting 1.5 if pre-test over 200 and 1.0 if under 200, but that seemed like too big of a swing so with her blessing I've scaled back to 1.25 and am holding. We've been at that dose for a week, and he's "blue and green" during the day, edging into blue/yellow at either end of the cycle.
George eats morning, noon, evening and goes to bed with a meal plus a frozen chicken medallion he can nibble on overnight. He has a very good appetite and I'll often split his dinner and give him some of it late afternoon if he's begging hard. Overall at 16 pounds he's cleaning up 4-5 cans of Fancy Feast plus the chicken medallion, plus occasionally grazing on a few Stella&Chewy freezed dried bits I leave out for snackage.
We have somewhat of a back leg issue so I've started him on 5mcg of B12. He has good energy and plays with his little yarn balls every day.
George is wonderful about testing and doesn't object at all. Shots, however, are becoming a drama. At first it was no problem, but now when he sees it coming he gets tense and mad. Yesterday he bit me hard enough to draw blood. I've tried everything I've read about here, use the smallest needles and am pretty confident of my technique. I'm not tense or upset about it, but he sure is. I think this morning I'll have wrap him in a towel for self-defense. I'd love to hear any tips you all have!
 
Hi might be going into hypos and you are not catching it...although you are not getting a rebound--higher numbers--if so. I just know that my Sebastian was being seriously overdoses while at the vet and growled at me when I first started giving the shots... I think he knew that shot was going to make him feel bad. After a while, he stopped and my assumption was that he knew that when I gave him shots he would not feel bad...
 
Morning Ruth ~O) Welcome :-D

George is looking good, you're doing great :smile: I can't give dose advice, but I think your intuition is good. Sticking with 1.25 was a good idea,
rather than basing dosage on preshot values, which we don't do here. They are given some consideration of course, but
dosage is mainly based on nadirs, when the insulin's effect is at its strongest. And Lantus needs consistency - the same dose, 12 hours apart.
Not 1.0 in the morning, 1.5 PM, 1.25 the next morning etc.. You'll never know what's really going on that way

Looking at George's SS, one thing that pops out is you need to try to get more tests in his PM cycle. The dose advisors
will want to see what's happening there.
 
Welcome to Lantus Land!

I have at least one immediate thought regarding shots. Exactly what kind of syringes are you using (i.e., the gauge and length of the needle)? You might want to make sure you're using a 31 gauge and a short, 5/16 needle).

With respect to your spreadsheet, it looks like George's numbers dropped below 50 on 1/19. A drop below 50 warrants a dose reduction. I'm not sure where your kitty's nadir falls. I would, however, encourage you to get additional tests when you see a +3 at 70. Further, it is very important to test during the PM cycle. You need to get at the minimum, one test at night. Many cats experience lower numbers at night so you may be missing dose reductions. Without those tests, you can't keep your cat safe and you're missing half of your data.
 
Hi guys and welcome to lantus land! I see you are in West MI, I'm over in the thumb (waving!) No dosing advice from me but I hear ya on the shot times .. mocha was a real pain to shoot, it always took both me and my husband to catch her and hold her down .. wasn't fun, but we got through it and you will too! have a great day guys!
 
George is looking good! I would encourage you to keep filling in the blanks as far as testing - I don't mean to test all day every day, but just mix the spot checks up some. +3 one day, +5 another day, maybe a +8 sometime. Of course any time you can do curves that is helpful too, and if you see low numbers you'll want to keep testing. I'll echo what Sienne said about night checks too. Nighttime cycles can look very different than daytime ones, so we all try to get at least one spot check per night, and more if you can. When you see something like last night's drop from 218 to 75 at +2, that's a fast drop so try to get another test or two after that. Most likely he is going lower than you realize at night, and bouncing back up. If he's going under 50, then you'll want to try a dose reduction.

Also, is George gaining weight on that amount of food, or is he maintaining? And is 16 pounds a good weight for him, or is he overweight? He looks like a big boy. :smile: Unregulated diabetics often eat more, but his numbers are almost always under renal threshhold, so I would think his appetite would have slowed to more normal. That sounds like a lot of food, so keep an eye on his weight and adjust if he is gaining (spoken as someone who wishes she had done that - Lucy gained a lot of weight because I thought I was supposed to let her eat whatever she wanted while she was unregulated. 4 years later, I still haven't gotten the weight off of her).

Overall, really good though!
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top