Lydia newly diagnosed

[Lydia's mom]

Hi all,
My senior kitty, Lydia was diagnosed as diabetic on 6/16/23. I brought her to the vet for her adequan injection and she had peed on the bathroom floor multiple times in the days prior. Peeing on stuff when the box is dirty is not beyond her, so it took a few times before I thought anything of it. It was a slightly odd color on the paper towel and it had happened several times so I mentioned it to the vet. We were sent home with a sample of prescription dry, ProZinc insulin and syringes.
Anyhow, post diagnosis I went online to see what I could learn. I was in a feline lymphoma support group on FB with my other cat before he passed last year, so I figured there must be a diabetes one. Sure enough, there is and I signed up the same day and spent many hours browsing.

I've bought more canned food and got some lower carb dry for the boys (2 other male cats in the house, both a bit chubby). They're used to being free feed, and the boys don't really even eat wet food, they don't seem to like it. I'll transition the whole house eventually to wet, but its not going to be easy.

The poking is mixed result. I'm assuming I'll get the hang of it, but her poor ears in the meantime... One ear seems to not actually contain blood?

So far I've been testing her sugar before breakfast and dinner. Feeding her, and then giving her insulin a little after that. On the weekend, it was easy.

My main dilemma is with my schedule. During the week I'm generally up around 9am. I give cat breakfast at that time. Then coffee and dressed and out the door to the horse barn. I'm home around 12:30p. I'm home for about an hour, long enough to eat breakfast/lunch, pack my dinner for work, shower, dress and give Lydia her medicines in a snack (she takes gabapentin and I give her a little powdered joint supplement while I'm at hiding stuff in food).
I leave for work at 1:30pm and then get home at 12:30am.
At night things are fine schedule wise. She'll get her test, dinner and insulin at about 1:00am. For daytime I'm trying to figure out if I check her sugar in the morning and give her some breakfast, can I wait until her snack/ medicine time to give her the next dose of insulin? Maybe give her a bit bulkier of a snack?

Thanks for all the info and expertise in this forum!

 

[Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA)]

That’s a complicated schedule and I’ll tag @Suzanne & Darcy who is a prozinc user to see what she thinks about the shot time. I know it’s best to do them 12 hours apart but prozync is a bit more forgiving than Lantus.

good job on browsing and having your spreadsheet setup! Prozync ia a great insulin for cats and 1 is a good starting dose. What’s the lower carb dry food you switched them to? The only 2 low carb dry foods are Dr.Elsey's and Young Again Zero Carb. With prozync and dry food you want to follow the SLGS protocol. Are you able to get 2 more tests a day? If you test her when you wake up, can you also test her at 12:30? And in the evening, any way you can test her at +2? We dose by the lowest a cat goes in a 12-hour cycle so we really need a few more test to see what the insulin is doing.

as for testing, also great job! Are you warming up the ears? The ears will eventually “learn” to bleed but what gauge size lancets are you using? You want to start with 28 or even 26 as they’ll puncture a slightly larger hole that will make it easier for you to get a decent size droplet as you get the hang of it. And you want to aim for the sweet spot:

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Welcome to FDMB!

The good news is that your vet prescribed Prozinc which is one of the better insulins for managing feline diabetes. Even better, Prozinc allows a little more flexibility with dosing and timing. As Ale noted, ideally you want to give insulin every 12-hours. Not everyone's life can be configured around their cat! Prozinc is the one insulin that can flex a bit.

Give some thought to shot time. If at all possible, having some time to give Lydia her insulin and then get a test before you're out the door may be helpful. (I moved my shot time to 5:00 AM/PM because my cat had an early nadir and I could leave for work at around 7:00. It gave me time for a couple of tests so I would know if I needed to leave out higher carb food.)

If you're planning on switching Lydia to a low carb, canned food diet, you may want to consider a timed feeder. The feeder may be helpful for when you're out of the house. There are microchip sensitive feeders that will only open for the cat whose chip is synced with the feeder. They are helpful devices but pricey!

You also do not want to feed Lydia in the period that's 2 hours prior to her shot. Feeding too close to shot time can inflate the pre-shot number.

This is a link to our Prozinc forum. If you've not already done so, I'd encourage you to look over the sticky notes at the top of the board. There's a wealth of information about the insulin, dosing methods, etc.

As for home testing, it's not that there's no blood in your cat's ear!! It takes a bit of time for the capillary bed along the edge of the ear to build up. Once it does, the ear will bleed much more easily. You also want to get some wider gauge lancets (e.g., 28 gauge like Ale suggested) and once your cat's ear is accustomed to being poked, you can move to a 30 gauge lancet.

 

[Suzanne & Darcy]

Could she possibly have shots around noon/12:30 pm and 12:30 a.m. ? This is a complicated schedule. Do you think you could have a Freestyle Libre sensor put on her to monitor her blood glucose since you are not home much? How many days consecutively do you work? How many days off at a time? Are you off the same days each week or does it vary?

 

[Lydia's mom]

So, a couple more days have passed. What I've done is test Lydia's sugar first thing when I get up. Then feed everyone, they're currently splitting a small can of Fancy Feast savory Center, though Lydia cleans up after and winds up eating probably 2/3 of it. Then Lydia has been getting one of those sheba perfect portions in addition. There's usually a little kibble left from their night meal at this point, so the boys have food available.
I test again when I get home around 12:30, give her her snack +meds (its been one of those lickable treats, I don't use a specific brand), put out the dry for the day, I've been splitting 1/3cup of their old food, Purina One High Protein, and 1/3 cup of the "better" food. It's Essence Ocean and Freshwater, I know its not low carb, but it was better numbers than the Purina, and in the year I've had these boys I've had no luck persuading them to eat anything healthy, so we're taking baby steps.
After snack she gets her insulin. Up to today her sugar has been high enough that I felt comfortable giving her the insulin before I left. Today, it was 157 in the morning, we had to go to the vet for an adequan shot, and then I went and did my barn stuff. The test at 12:30 was 126. I skipped her insulin, didn't seem like a good idea to give it at that level and then leave her for the day, we'll see what things look like when I get home tonight. The good news is she felt stronger today when I went to stick her in her carrier, I think she's feeling somewhat better.
At night I don't think I can manage a test at +2, at least not consistently. I imagine I could force myself to do it a couple days though.
I work Mon-Thurs on this schedule. Fri, Sat and Sun I have no dead set schedule so I can do more testing then and hopefully that gives me some more insight.

If I do the Libre, It looks like it will store the numbers for the last 8 hours, but I still can't see them until I'm actually home, correct? So, by the time I get to scan it, I will have about 3 hours unaccounted for, but that's better than all 11 hours. I guess it would be useful at night, I could get the +2 test then since I'd only have to be awake for a minute to scan the cat. My vet did mention that we could try it, but that most cats want to rip it off.

 

[Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA)]

Just want to make sure you’re testing her first before giving the snack. The pre shot test needs to be done with no food for at least 2 hours and if she ate by 10 or 10:30 and you’re testing her at 12:30, that’s fine. Just make sure you test, feed, shoot in that order. 126 is a low amps for a beginner. The other option you have when you get a lower number is to stall for 20 minutes without food and retest to see if the bg is going up on its own. You can then decide to skip or give a token dose which is 15-20% of the regular dose.