lori and tom said:
yep, i can totally understand your at the end of your rope...and very frustrated.
you can only do what you can do Kim. that is the reality.
you feed the low carb...you give insulin.....most importantly you love on and care for kitty, give her security, warmth and whatever else she wants from you (sans kibble)
insulin change will not work well for you...unless....and this is a big unless....
my friend cindy and mouse puts in 13 - 15 hour days at work...she has like 14 cats...she does 5 days a week, but is very busy on weekends.
pzi was not working for mousie after years and years.
she switched to lantus knowing full well she could not do what the lantus folk do.
she settles for a curve when she can.
and basically hanging in the blues is good enuf for her.
she does'nt take chances...she shoots low...she keeps her expectations realistic.
would you like to try this.
with levemir preferably.
with that i could help you.
waaaaaaaaait
must clarify a couple things.
pzi worked great for us actually. i absolutely loved the stuff. and so did Mousie. Mousie was exceptionally regulated on pzi. many admired her regulation on it even, with her perfect curves she gave us. buttttt, we did not use prozinc. we used pzi, by Idexx. if it was still available i'd still be using it actually. it's flexibility was our saving grace given the hours i work. we only switched to lantus because our pzi was discontinued over some stupid technicality and because i fell into $200 of free lantus.
since many of you came along after our switch to lantus, thus probably not aware of my Mousie and I, I must explain a couple things. Mousie is a Type 1 diabetic, unlike probably 95% of other diabetic cats. she is indeed a different breed of diabetes than most kitties seen here so while she never went into remission on pzi, she's not going to on lantus or any other insulin either because remission does not happen in Type 1's like it does in Type 2's.
just wanted to clarify that pzi didn't fail us but it was pzi, not pz, and Mousie is not a candidate for remission like many here strive for. i will agree that my expectations are realistic for sure. i expect to keep her in the best numbers i can for as long as i can and see if she can make it to be the longest living insulin dependent diabetic kitty on the planet **anti-jinx**
given that she was diagnosed at 4.5 years old and is now nearing 9.5 years old, we may just make it as she still runs around like crazy, and has not developed any other complications, and still seems oblivious to the fact she has a disease. yeahhhhhhh. she still is typically under 160 i'd say about 85% of the time, and under 100 probably 50% of the time, as she was on pzi, and while she still has to have her insulin every day, i have no problem with those numbers or giving her that insulin for the next 9 years or however long she chooses to put up with me
now to the lantus thing. yes, i went in to lantus knowing full well i cannot live by the meter like many do if typical protocols are followed. i just let everyone know up front what i could and could not do and where i could, i DID do the extra testing, i.e. nighttime, weekends, holidays, etc..... that was no problem for anyone giving me guidance either. they understood there's no way in hell i can do mid-day testing during the week so i would make up for it by doing it at night or on the weekends. simple.
our shots are very rarely 12 hours apart but often during the week more like 11 & 13 hours or even 10 & 14 hours sometimes depending on how busy work is. the only time we have a problem with shot schedule and an effect on Mousie is if we work exceptionally long and two shots are due within let's say 8 or 9 hours of each other. often then i have to reduce or skip so as to avoid serious overlap that results in too low of numbers. for us that's no big deal as Mousie tends to get right back on track with her numbers within the next two shots. for others, that causes big problems and keeps kitty out of control though soooooooo
bear in mind that Mousie has never been one to run wild with her numbers. she's made this dance relatively easy for me, other than the first few months on each insulin so while i say do what you can with what works for your life, if your kitty has other concerns like a history of ketones or is especially sensitive to insulin or has pancreatitis or whatever, each person has to take all that into consideration when deciding what to do and what their goals are. i think everyone's number one goal should be to have a happy healthy kitty for as long as possible, even above remission in my opinion.
and yes, i don't do curves very often. for us there's not much need in all honesty after all these years. i do amps and pmps and once in a while i get a spot check here or there. to be 100% honest, if i do any testing between shots it's more often because Mousie looks a bit "off" or is acting a bit hyper and sure enough when i do those spot checks, she's a bit on the low side and needs some food. like i said, she makes it all pretty easy for me so while we're probably not a very good example to use as far as religious testing or analyzing data and making adjustments, we certainly are as far as working with what you've got to work with.
i'm just not too comfortable telling people with complicated kitties to do as we do though so do keep that in mind when comparing your kitty to mine and making decisions as to what to do next. i do think though that lantus and levemir work fantastically well in kitties, especially if the human can have patience, but i would like it to be a bit more flexible and forgiving than it is so it could work it's magic for even more kitties :roll:
