My cat is now on 4 units and sugar levels still high

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Christina5402

Member Since 2021
I adopted Scootch 2 years ago (was in shelter for a year and no one was adopting him due to diabetes). At that time Je was on 1 unit of lantus twice a day and went into remission 2.5 months later. He had dental surgery in early December and pretty much right after I noticed increased thirst, tested and glucose was in the high 300s and during the day curve it went as high as 460; hence, we started him
Back on the lantus but haven’t been able to get his sugars below 300....started on 1 unit 2xs/day and VERY slowly increased in 1/2 increments each week. We are now at 4 units 2xs/day now and sugars are still not coming down? He is on DM now (started about a week ago - previously was on Friskies pate, which is what he has always been eating), negative culture so no infection. He was diagnosed with Congestive Heart Failure (early stages) about 1.5 years ago and started atenolol just before dental surgery which we have since stopped until we get sugars in order. He is acting fine, eating, social, etc...but does drink more than “usual” of course. Really don’t know what / why his sugars aren’t moving at all? Any feedback would be most appreciated!
 
bumping this up

Hard for me to say what is going on with Scootch, maybe some other people will have some ideas. My first impression is that increasing by 0.5U each week isn't necessarily that slow-- we increase in 0.25U, and base it on home-testing numbers rather than weekly vet curves.

Sometimes too much insulin can look like too little-- they go low briefly, then zoom up in the body's reaction to a low number. What's tricky is that the zooming up period can last a lot longer, on the order of days, so if you only get a picture of BG once a week at the vet's (where they tend to be elevated anyway), there's a good chance it can look like the cat needs more insulin when he really needs less.

As Larry says, a spreadsheet with more BG data (even just the data from the vet curves if you aren't home testing yet) would be really helpful for us to try to figure out what's going on.

Other than that... dental problems are a really common cause of cats falling out of remission, so that fits. I'm not familar with atenolol, but it seems to be a beta blocker? There are some medications, like steroids, that can trigger diabetes in cats, but I don't know of any reason why this one would be having an effect. Often, when there are other problems such as heart failure, we treat that issue first and then "dose around" it, adjusting insulin as needed.

I hope you can get some answers for you and Scootch.
 
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