I didn't see the message about testing her glucose before we went. We just got back.
They did blood work and tested her urine, she said her electrolytes are low, her white blood cell count is high, she told me the blood cells could be because of an infection or a tumor or cancer or just because she's sick and her body is trying to fix itself and said more tests would be required to find out anything about that. She said her potassium is low, on this paper the number is 2.5mmol/L. I hope that's the right number I'm looking at, here's a link to a picture of the paper I got today
http://imgur.com/a/g8z9W She told me she has some ketones in her urine but said with the things we're gonna do they should go down. They gave her fluids and showed me how to do it, she got a shot of B12 and they gave her cerenia for anti-nausea. She sent me home with potassium supplements and an appetite stimulant Mirtazapine along with a bag of fluid and the line and needles to give it to her. She said we can give her 100ml either once every 24 or 48 hours depending on how much fluid she is taking in.
She walked around for a few minutes when we got home then went behind the couch for about 10 minutes then came out and drank a tiny bit of water. She didn't want anything to do with the food we tried a few minutes ago, so we fed her some from the syringe. The appetite stimulant pills are pretty small and it says to give her half of one at a time so I'm not too worried about that, although we haven't given it to her yet. The potassium tablets are concerning me though because it says to give her a whole tablet twice a day for two weeks and they are bigger than I thought they would be. They're roughly the size of an aspirin pill for humans and I don't know if we'll be able to get her to take it.
The appointment was more expensive than they estimated for me on the phone. They said this was because they weren't sure if I was going to want the B12 for sure so they didn't add it in, and because of the cost of the appetite stimulant and potassium tablets. I sent a picture of the prescription for insulin to DCIN as soon as I got home, it's getting very very close to their help being the only way I can start her on insulin. The kind they wrote it for is Glargine and it says on there that it can be substituted with generic. I think that's all the information from the vet visit.
This was the first appointment with them where nobody suggested we put her to sleep. I think they understand at least a little now that we fully intend to try treating this and are not giving up just yet. I'm worried about her eating, she is fighting us more and more it seems each time we try to feed her with the syringe. I know she must hate it as much as we hate doing it but yesterday she seemed to take it alot easier than today. I know she must have been aggitated from being at the vet for almost two hours though, I'm hoping maybe when she calms down it might go a little easier. The vet gave me a couple of printed off sheets of information about diabetic cats and how to treat and care for them. When she gave them to me I was confused about why they didn't give me that at our first appointment, but I'm sure it was because she gave up hope on Mittens immediately upon meeting her and didn't think we were going to need that information. She should provide this information to anyone who has a cat diagnosed with diabetes anyway I feel.
So very soon we're going to attempt to give her the appetite stimulant. They said I could give it to her whenever after I got home. Should I wait and let the anti-nausea medicine have time to try to work or should we give her this right now?