Mango at 87

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Lesliejm

Lesliejm

Member Since 2017
After being off the insulin for a week since I've been out of town, I just come home and mangos blood glucose is 87.Just fed him a little bit of young again that I just got in the mail for a free sample. Going to check his blood in an hour but I think 87 for being off the insulin for a week is pretty darn good. remember he was a dry kibble Kitty before I started insulin. I wish I would have waited to start it to see if the wet food would have brought it down which I think it has.
 
Woohoo Mango! That is pretty amazing. Keep track of it in your SS, maybe time to think about an OTJ trial since he has already been several days without shots and is holding? I don’t have the experience to suggest this, just a thought, but @Marje and Gracie could give you insight.
 
Lesliejm said:
remember he was a dry kibble Kitty before I started insulin
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When was the last time he had regular dry (not the YA since that is LC)?

Those are nice numbers.:D:D:D

Just a thought if you've managed to get him to eat wet reliably it's a better option than feeding dry even if it is low carb dry.

Here's a link to a post by Dr Lisa explaining why a wet diet is important and healthier for cats

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/...r-more-than-just-carbohydrate-content.175004/
 
He’s looking good but, IMHO, he’s still seeing too much blue. I’m asuming he’s on Lantus and not Levemir? It’s not in your signature block or on the SS.

Before we start a trial, we usually like to see kitty in almost all green numbers at very low doses (as in 0.1u or a drop). The stronger the kitty’s pancreas is going into remission, the better the chances of success.

The goal would be a SS that’s looks more like China’s (look at her 2017 tab before starting the trial) with only a sporadic blue number.

If he were mine, I’d put him back on a drop of insulin to start and see if that brings the curve down. To draw a drop, push down on the plunger, hold it while inserting into the pen, and then let go. The pressure will draw up a drop.

You’d been doing a great job of testing, so I’d suggest you keep it up. Also, you might want to try a +9 LC snack so we can see if his pancreas is working. If it is, the PS will come down into blue.
 
Lesliejm said:
I think 87 for being off the insulin for a week is pretty darn good
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Looks really good indeed!

I have personally made the choice to not give Quintus insulin with similar numbers, though I use an AT so I guess it's not quite the same numbers. He hasn't been OTJ but he's been running down the dosing ladder so fast, and I've followed, that I'm trying to see how he behaves without insulin. I'm aware it's not "kosher protocol".

Given my experience yesterday with 0.1u on Quintus, I would expect Mango to maybe go shark swimming and be ready for that. I'm not sure how much you generally control low numbers with food -- if it's something you try to do or avoid doing.

Caveat: just a data point!

Marje and Gracie said:
Before we start a trial, we usually like to see kitty in almost all green numbers at very low doses (as in 0.1u or a drop). The stronger the kitty’s pancreas is going into remission, the better the chances of success.
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This is the bit I am still curious about. How do we know that keeping a cat on insulin longer makes its pancreas stronger? Do we have an explanation of the mechanisms involved? Or data? If a cat is staying in normalish and "safe" numbers, on what are we basing our decision to intervene more rather than let his body try to deal with it, ready of course to step in if it shows it isn't? I ask the question because there is a cost to continuing to give insulin: in work and worry for the CG, in risk of low numbers for the kitty.
 
Stephanie & Quintus said:
How do we know that keeping a cat on insulin longer makes its pancreas stronger?
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The experience on the board is that often cats who go off insulin quickly are more likely to come out of remission than those whose caregivers are able to continue insulin support.

George has been off insulin since april 2016, take a look at the months leading up to his OTJ trial, I took it very slowly, in an ideal world that is the sort of BG range you want to see. He is still in remission.

I agree with @Marje and Gracie Mango doesn't quite look like he is there yet, with a human meter you want the cat spending most of its time in the range of a normal cat 50-80 (human meter), and ideally you want those ambg and pmbg to be all green.
 
Gill & George said:
The experience on the board is that often cats who go off insulin quickly are more likely to come out of remission than those whose caregivers are able to continue insulin support.
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But did somebody run numbers? Do we have data? I am very wary of confirmation bias for situations such as this one.

Gill & George said:
George has been off insulin since april 2016, take a look at the months leading up to his OTJ trial, I took it very slowly, in an ideal world that is the sort of BG range you want to see. He is still in remission.
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I don't doubt that, but how do we know he wouldn't still be in remission if you had gone faster? Or that the fact that he is still in remission is due to the fact that you went slow?

This is what I'm trying to figure out, and I've brought up this topic more than once, and the answer always seems to be "it's our experience". And I get that this is what this board is built on. Experience. Trial and error. But have people who took their cats OTJ fast systematically failed? How do we know we're not looking for the pattern we want to see?

I see a ton of psychological reasons for believing that going OTJ gradually is better, and so far the justification seems to stop at "we noticed that". The two together make me skeptical. So if there is more data or better arguments (or scientific reasoning on how/why) I would very much like to hear. There's a personal stake in this for me of course as I'm in the process of maybe taking Quintus OTJ fast, because it's the conclusion I've come to weighing the pros and cons for him and me, and if I'm missing a big chunk of those (pros/cons), I'm really interested in adding them to my assessment for what to do now.

And I guess these questions are relevant for other people like @Lesliejm who might be wondering (I'm just guessing) if it's worth putting both bean and kitty through more weeks of pokes and shots and controlled feeding and hypo worries -- or not.
 
Lesliejm said:
Mango's ss is named copy of spreadsheet for this year.
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Oh, just understood! The 2018 sheet is called "copy of template" in your SS. So, no need to change the link, but if you want to make things easier for those visiting your SS you can try doing two things:

- right-click on the tab for your 2018 sheet, at the bottom, and select "rename" (and call it something like "2018")
- you can also drag the tab to the right so that it appears first when one opens the SS

Hope this helps!
 
Stephanie & Quintus said:
But did somebody run numbers? Do we have data? I am very wary of confirmation bias for situations such as this one.

I don't doubt that, but how do we know he wouldn't still be in remission if you had gone faster? Or that the fact that he is still in remission is due to the fact that you went slow?

This is what I'm trying to figure out, and I've brought up this topic more than once, and the answer always seems to be "it's our experience". And I get that this is what this board is built on. Experience. Trial and error. But have people who took their cats OTJ fast systematically failed? How do we know we're not looking for the pattern we want to see?

I see a ton of psychological reasons for believing that going OTJ gradually is better, and so far the justification seems to stop at "we noticed that". The two together make me skeptical. So if there is more data or better arguments (or scientific reasoning on how/why) I would very much like to hear. There's a personal stake in this for me of course as I'm in the process of maybe taking Quintus OTJ fast, because it's the conclusion I've come to weighing the pros and cons for him and me, and if I'm missing a big chunk of those (pros/cons), I'm really interested in adding them to my assessment for what to do now.

And I guess these questions are relevant for other people like @Lesliejm who might be wondering (I'm just guessing) if it's worth putting both bean and kitty through more weeks of pokes and shots and controlled feeding and hypo worries -- or not.
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Have you read Glycemic Status and Predictors of Relapse for Diabetic Cats in Remission

As a scientist, I was also a bit wary of anecdotal data when we first came here. However, for whatever reasons, one doesn’t see the kinds of studies which would help us in matters such as these. One would think veterinarians doing this research would seek out groups like ours where the sample sizes could be much greater but then the controls might be harder to implement.

Here’s the way I look at it, a CG can put their cat into a trial if they want even if we don’t think the cat is ready based on our experience. If it doesn’t work, they can restart insulin.

But I’ll tell you that getting a cat into remission a second time and keeping them there is harder. Why not give them a stronger remission to begin with so they have the chance of staying there vs taking them off insulin prematurely, having them fall out of remission never to return there. Doesn’t make sense to me.
 
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Mango has been checked yearly at the vets. He was 200bg a year ago and I was told he was prediabetic and this year he was in the three hundreds. No reason except he was eating dry food and overweight.
 
Gill & George said:
The experience on the board is that often cats who go off insulin quickly are more likely to come out of remission than those whose caregivers are able to continue insulin support.
Click to expand...
Stephanie & Quintus said:
But did somebody run numbers? Do we have data? I am very wary of confirmation bias for situations such as this one.
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No and no. It's based strictly on years of observation.

There hasn't been a whole lot of research done on feline diabetes... at least on the practical side of it. For the most part there are people like us. People with diabetic cats. People from all walks of life. Volunteers who try to help others. We study. We learn. We observe. We share our experience(s) with others. That's it. That's all we got. :)
 
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