Christina & TJ
Member Since 2016
Hi everyone,
My 11 year old kitty TJ was diagnosed with diabetes on at the end of May. Poor TJ has had quite the ordeal in the last month. Upon diagnosis, the vet showed me how to administer her insulin, sent me home with prescription Purina DM dry food, 1 unit of Vetsulin to start on, u40 syringes, and told me to watch for lethargy. I asked all the questions I could think of, cried my eyes out, and brought TJ home to give her her first dose. Within a couple of hours, she was acting sick, meowing strangely, and would not eat. I panicked and searched the internet. I gave her karo syrup and eventually she ate a bit. She continued to act sick so I took her to an emergency hospital where I found out just how sick she really was. She had ketoacidosis and was very dehydrated. She spent 5 days in the hospital, part of which was in the kitty ICU
. She had a lot of complications, but they were thankfully able to save her. One of the issues she had was that the original vet gave her a steroid shot that fought the insulin (it took 3 weeks for the shot to leave her system). The internal medicine vet that oversaw her care changed her to 2 units of Prozinc. We went back to the hospital a week later for a curve and TJ was in the 400s and 500s, so they increased her to 3 units. Two weeks later, TJ had another curve and was in the 400s again, so they increased her to 4 units and that is what we have been on for the last week. I have since switched veterinarians (not telling me to give insulin with food was too much for me to get over, plus the steroid shot) and the new vet is working in conjunction with the internal med. vet from the hospital.
As far as food, TJ was a free-feeding dry food junkie. I have always given her Fancy Feast classic wet food and she has always licked the food until all of the juice was gone, leaving the actual food. I still give her wet food first twice a day, then I give her a measured amount of Purina dry DM (followed by insulin). I also give her dry food again 5-6 hours after insulin doses (so 4x a day). I have had this routine going for about a week now. I definitely want to get TJ on wet food only, but she is resisting tooth and nail. I have tried Royal Canin and Hill's prescription wet foods, but she will not touch the Hill's and only licks at the Royal Canin. I also tried Wellness Core (grain free) and she did not like that one at all. I have tried mixing them with her dry food, but she still just licks the juice and leaves both the wet and dry food. I am not home testing, but I have attempted it and had a little success. I have the Alphatrak 2 meter. I know I need to begin home testing again since the dose is continuing to rise. I am afraid they will want to increase her dose again next week.
The only other concern I have is that TJ's face has been twitching for about two weeks now. I took her to the new regular vet to run bloodwork and check her urine. Her urine was full of glucose, a little blood, but no ketones. The internal med. vet said there was no physiological explanation for the twitching in her bloodwork and that it looked fine. She does have neuropathy in her hind legs pretty bad, could the twitching be related to that?
Sorry for the very long post! I love this cat to the moon and it breaks my heart every day that such a wonderful cat has to go through this. Any advice and insight is very much appreciated! Thank you!
Christina
My 11 year old kitty TJ was diagnosed with diabetes on at the end of May. Poor TJ has had quite the ordeal in the last month. Upon diagnosis, the vet showed me how to administer her insulin, sent me home with prescription Purina DM dry food, 1 unit of Vetsulin to start on, u40 syringes, and told me to watch for lethargy. I asked all the questions I could think of, cried my eyes out, and brought TJ home to give her her first dose. Within a couple of hours, she was acting sick, meowing strangely, and would not eat. I panicked and searched the internet. I gave her karo syrup and eventually she ate a bit. She continued to act sick so I took her to an emergency hospital where I found out just how sick she really was. She had ketoacidosis and was very dehydrated. She spent 5 days in the hospital, part of which was in the kitty ICU
. She had a lot of complications, but they were thankfully able to save her. One of the issues she had was that the original vet gave her a steroid shot that fought the insulin (it took 3 weeks for the shot to leave her system). The internal medicine vet that oversaw her care changed her to 2 units of Prozinc. We went back to the hospital a week later for a curve and TJ was in the 400s and 500s, so they increased her to 3 units. Two weeks later, TJ had another curve and was in the 400s again, so they increased her to 4 units and that is what we have been on for the last week. I have since switched veterinarians (not telling me to give insulin with food was too much for me to get over, plus the steroid shot) and the new vet is working in conjunction with the internal med. vet from the hospital. As far as food, TJ was a free-feeding dry food junkie. I have always given her Fancy Feast classic wet food and she has always licked the food until all of the juice was gone, leaving the actual food. I still give her wet food first twice a day, then I give her a measured amount of Purina dry DM (followed by insulin). I also give her dry food again 5-6 hours after insulin doses (so 4x a day). I have had this routine going for about a week now. I definitely want to get TJ on wet food only, but she is resisting tooth and nail. I have tried Royal Canin and Hill's prescription wet foods, but she will not touch the Hill's and only licks at the Royal Canin. I also tried Wellness Core (grain free) and she did not like that one at all. I have tried mixing them with her dry food, but she still just licks the juice and leaves both the wet and dry food. I am not home testing, but I have attempted it and had a little success. I have the Alphatrak 2 meter. I know I need to begin home testing again since the dose is continuing to rise. I am afraid they will want to increase her dose again next week
. The only other concern I have is that TJ's face has been twitching for about two weeks now. I took her to the new regular vet to run bloodwork and check her urine. Her urine was full of glucose, a little blood, but no ketones. The internal med. vet said there was no physiological explanation for the twitching in her bloodwork and that it looked fine. She does have neuropathy in her hind legs pretty bad, could the twitching be related to that?
Sorry for the very long post! I love this cat to the moon and it breaks my heart every day that such a wonderful cat has to go through this. Any advice and insight is very much appreciated! Thank you!
Christina
