Long Road

[wyleesmom221]

After almost two years, I have finally gotten my cat on Lantus. I need to express my frustration, disappointment, anger, etc in the fact that I work in the Veterinary field as an assistant & i truly feel my cat did not get the time & attention he needed. God help us if we have a complicated case like an uncontrolled diabetic. I tried Novalin, Pro-zinc, I asked about Lantus and kept being told how expensive it was. I said I didn't care, I kept getting the run around. It took him almost dying last week & me calling another hospital to step in. Anyway, any thoughts or comments about switching him over. It has been a week and his numbers have not been that great yet. I have been reading about tight regulating with multiple glucose checks. Also what are people's thoughts on Raw diets.

 

[Mum of two felines]

welcome!!! I am glad you found us. I don't have any experience on either of your questions. Maybe looking under the Lantus thread. I know there will members coming by here shortly. If you would like to set up your spreadsheet for the home testing you can fond the information here http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/fdmb-spreadsheet-instructions.130337/. And if you would go to your signature block that is located under your profile you can put your kitty's name, dose, insulin name, and BG monitor name. This is also where you'll put your spreadsheet link.

 

[MrWorfMen's Mom]

Hi wylee and Mom (did I guess kitty's name right?) Welcome to FDMB. I'm sorry to hear you've been having such a hard time getting the help you need to regulate your kitty. Never fear....help is here.

I'm sure you will have questions about Tight Regulation and as Mum of two felines said, there is a forum for kitties on Lantus (and their parents) and they can help you with questions, dosing opinions, etc. Given what you have gone through so far, I think you will find a lot of support for switching to Lantus. It's pretty popular around here and we often find folks switching from the other options you used for the same reasons you switched.

Regulating your cat is a marathon not a sprint so don't despair over not seeing a lot of improvement yet. Every cat has their own timetable and patience is the name of the game. I know that's not what you wanted to hear because your patience has obviously been tried relentlessly up till now. But we can help you figure out how to start making headway! So if you have any specific questions about Tight Regulation, dosing or whatever, post them over on the Lantus/Levemir forum where you can learn from the immense experience of the those most familiar with Lantus.

I do not have any knowledge about raw diets myself but there are folks here who make their own food and others who feed ready made raw diets who will be able to help you with that. I am going to suggest you change the title on this message to something like "? about Raw diets" (you can put a question mark on the title by using the prefix drop down box at the left of the title.) to get more responses.

Oh one other thing........what would you like us to call you? Hope to see you posting again soon!

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

Raw diets are great...especially if you make your own since you control the quality of the ingredients, but most (if not all) of the frozen pre-made raw diets are fine for a diabetic IF you can get them to eat it.

As for the Lantus, do you have any tests from when you were on any of the other insulins? What dose was he on? If you've started Lantus, what dose did you start on?

The hardest thing about switching to Lantus will be getting used the the fact that it's a depot drug which is totally unlike the "in and out" insulins like Novolin and ProZinc. Lantus dosing is based on the nadir, not the pre-shot numbers and that can take a little while to "sink in" when you've used the other insulins

Lantus also doesn't have to cost an arm and a leg either....A lot of us are buying our Lantus from Canada since it's 1/3rd the price. Here's information on buying lantus from Canada

 

[Larry and Kitties]

I asked about Lantus and kept being told how expensive it was.

In reality Lantus is about the same price or can be less expensive than ProZinc. This is because a 10 ml vial of ProZinc only contains 400 units of insulin while a 10 ml vial if Lantus contains 1000 units

 

[Squalliesmom]

I can't offer any suggestions re: Lantus as I will be switching over to it myself in the near future. I have been feeding frozen raw for a while now and all my cats like it but I've just discovered the one I use, Nature's Variety Instinct, is very high in phosphorus, so I will be looking for a different brand. I really didn't have any problem getting my cats to eat the raw, which really surprised me, lol!