Missed Doses help

Status
Not open for further replies.
TheJackcat

TheJackcat

Member Since 2018
hello,
My husband dropped the Lantus vial this morning shattering it on the tile floors. Jack will miss his evening and morning insulin doses at a minimum, depending how quickly we can locate replacement tomorrow. (We live overseas, and the 1 American vet is out of lantus. We will have to procure on the local economy somehow.)
Will he be okay?
Should I space his meals out a bit to help the inevitable sugar spike?
He is fed 1/4 cup special diet dry food and 1/8 a can wet cat food (also special diet for diabetic cats) every twelve hours. No snacking or free grazing in between. Would it help to feed him his usual amount but spread out over an hour or two instead of all at once, or does it not really make a difference? Hyperglycemic is hyperglycemic. :/

Thank you!
(We are new to this. He was diagnosed almost two months ago. Hence the panic lol)

Kris
 
Oh, nooooooo!!!!!

Not much you can do to "substitute" for insulin-- I don't think spacing out the eating will make much of a difference.

One suggestion I would make is to be sure to be testing for ketones while you are insulin-less (especially if Jack has ever had an episode of ketones or DKA). Anything above "trace" means a trip to the vet.

Do you home-test blood glucose? What dose of Lantus is Jack on?
 
Should have said: ketones is really the only short-term danger of going without insulin. The problems that arise from hyperglycemia are generally in the longer term. So this really isn't the end of the world, as frustrating as it is!
 
Man that's a bummer. Not much you can do. If forget the dry and just give more of the low carb wet. The dry is too high in carb, even the perscription food. It's OK to feed throughout the day... It helps them keep from dropping too low... Just no food 2 hours prior to the preshot test.
 
Nan & Amber said:
Should have said: ketones is really the only short-term danger of going without insulin. The problems that arise from hyperglycemia are generally in the longer term. So this really isn't the end of the world, as frustrating as it is!
Click to expand...

Thank you so much for your encouragement and quick reply. He receives 3/10 cc twice a day.
No we don’t Home glucose. We’re still very new to this. Not quite two months in.
 
JanetNJ said:
Man that's a bummer. Not much you can do. If forget the dry and just give more of the low carb wet. The dry is too high in carb, even the perscription food. It's OK to feed throughout the day... It helps them keep from dropping too low... Just no food 2 hours prior to the preshot test.
Click to expand...
Hello Janet,
Thank you for your reply. Do you have a recommendation of how much wet food to substitute for the 1/4 cup dry?
 
There are a lot of different numbers and measurements that fly around with this stuff!

U-100 syringes typically used with Lantus are 3/10 cc in size for the whole syringe. 3/10 cc would be 30 Units total (in other words, a very large dose!).
 
JanetNJ said:
How much does the cat weigh? Do you feed the 5.5 Oz cans?
Click to expand...
Yes we use the 5.5 oz cans. Weight I’m not sure. He’s a larger breed and at his heaviest was 15 lbs. Since starting treatment he has lost quite a bit of weight. I would guess him to be around 12 pounds now, but I’m not certain.
 
Nan & Amber said:
There are a lot of different numbers and measurements that fly around with this stuff!

U-100 syringes typically used with Lantus are 3/10 cc in size for the whole syringe. 3/10 cc would be 30 Units total (in other words, a very large dose!).
Click to expand...

Oh I see. I must have been reading the wrong thing! Thank you for your correction. That is the size of his syringes. I only measure his dose to the third mark on the syringe. Thank you for your understanding. I’ve never had to communicate these details before.
 
TheJackcat said:
Yes we use the 5.5 oz cans. Weight I’m not sure. He’s a larger breed and at his heaviest was 15 lbs. Since starting treatment he has lost quite a bit of weight. I would guess him to be around 12 pounds now, but I’m not certain.
Click to expand...
If he's underweight is feed him as much as he wants. My 16 lb cat eats about 9-12 Oz a day, so I'd offer 2 cans a day.
 
No worries! We just always try to make sure to nail down these details because vets don't always communicate well, and have sometimes given fuzzy directions that lead people to give their cats a much-too-high dose (confusion between 1U and 10U on the syringe is particularly common :nailbiting: ).

All that out of the way-- 3U is a relatively high dose for a cat just starting treatment. Could be he needs that much, but it could also be that the higher carbs of the dry food (and possibly the wet food-- even the "diabetic" ones aren't always low-carb) could be propping him up. Please be very careful with any diet changes-- insulin needs can change rapidly!

Do you think you'd be willing to try home testing Jack's blood glucose? The time while you're waiting on the replacement insulin might be a good time to get started and get some practice in (there's a bit of a learning curve, though it soon becomes routine). Janet has a video linked in her signature showing just how it's done.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top