Nausea and diabetes?

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pevsfreedom

pevsfreedom

Member Since 2015
I think Luna ate something weird yesterday because she's had diarrhea and been throwing up all morning. She's supposed to eat and be given her 9 units in an hour but the vomiting concerns me. She's acting really lethargic and won't meow / move around much. Is there anything I should do / can do for nausea in this case? Should I feed/test as normal? Or perhaps halve her breakfast and shot?
 
So sorry to hear Luna is not feeling well. :(

I'd want to be sure you can get some food into her before giving her insulin. At 9u she isn't a typical diabetic cat. Does she have Acromegaly or IAA or both? Is she drinking? How bad is the diarrhea because I'd worry about dehydration with that and vomiting? What are her readings looking like these days? It appears she has a history of ketones so withholding completely may not be the best idea. If she won't eat on her own, could you syringe some food into her so she can have a shot even if it is a reduced dose? Hopefully others will chime in and offer their opinion.
 
Chances are she has acro or IAA. I can't get any vets around here to test for either, but she's been on 9u BID for 6+ months or so. She was 89 a few hours ago when I woke up. She won't eat or drink right now, I gave her a small piece of turkey which she threw up... chances are it might have been the turkey since we gave her some last night and I smelled it this morning (after I gave it to her, we bought it new yesterday) and it didn't smell right. She threw that up immediately. Her numbers are decent. 80s mid day and 150 pre-shot with occasional spikes to 200 or so. She hasn't had any ketone issues in over a year when she was out of control.

She's just being really weird and lethargic, won't move much. She's the biggest loud mouth ever and hasn't made a noise all morning. Maybe because she's all wet because I had to clean her.
 
Well hopefully this is just a food caused upset. Is her abdomen tender at all? Her numbers sound like they are pretty good so perhaps withholding for this morning would be the better idea although I would try to test for ketones just to be on the safe side. What about waiting for a few hours to see if she comes around and gets hungry? If she does, you could shoot late and then extend the next 12 hour period out long enough to get back on schedule. I've had to do 14 & 15 hour or 18/18 cycles etc. to get back on schedule a few times.
 
I'm not too worried about it being anything else right now. Am mostly just concerned about what to do insulin wise since she's never had trouble eating before. I'm sure she'll eat (she's a fiend) but she'll throw it all up I think. Thx for your advice.
 
If a very high BG I would only give a little insulin in case Luna vomits.
Could be pancreatitis.

Two years ago my MurrFee who was on 8 units Levemir twice daily vomited after injecting and I had to syringe feed him Kero mixed with some canned food to prevent BG from going too low.
Went to vet next day and then to ER. Ultrasound revealed pancreatitis.
For vomiting Cerenia is best. For nausea Ondansetron is best. SubQ fluids and pain meds are also given.

After MurrFee recovered his insulin does increase and he was diagnosed with acromegaly.
 
I did up end taking her to the vet. She's getting blood test, fluids, cerenia and other meds, and x-rays to make sure she didn't eat any foreign objects. Hopefully not pancreatitis. I don't doubt she's got acro. No vets around here have a clue what "acromegaly" is whenever I bring it up, and I can't send in the samples by myself for some reason. From what I understand the treatment for acro (besides surgery I can't afford) is just... keep giving insulin, so I don't really know if "knowing" would help us much, though I'm 99.4% sure she does have acro or at least IAA.

She threw up all her food within a minute of eating it this morning. I didn't give her any insulin today. I get to go pick her up at 3pm with the results and we go from there. She has lost 2 pounds in a month which I can't believe I didn't notice.
 
Acromegaly is extremely expensive to treat. There are limited facilities to have the treatment done and there are no guarantees so I think any decision to treat should also take into consideration how well the cat travels if need be and how they deal with vet visits even if the finances are not prohibitive. The other advantage to knowing about Acromegaly is that eventually other medical problems occur as a result and knowing might make dealing with them a little easier. As for the IAA, (my cat has IAA), it generally burns itself out after about a year but when it starts to do so, the cat will suddenly do some very steep dives out of the blue. It's nice to know that possibility exists so one can take extra precautions when monitoring is not possible. I had to insist on the IAA with my vet and then got told by the lab she deals with that the IAA test didn't exist.:rolleyes: If you want the testing done, I'd just insist. It's all done at MSU and it's not terribly expensive. Most of the cost is the blood draw and shipping. If you are interested and can convince your vet, all the instructions for sending samples etc. are available HERE. The lab code for the IGF-1 for acromegaly is 20005 and for IAA it's 20031.

Fingers crossed this is just a bad tummy upset and Luna will be back to eating like a fiend and talking up a storm in no time!
 
Yeah there's no way I could treat acromegaly. She's already on about $300 of insulin a month. Of course I'd "prefer" she has IAA.. I mean she's on 18 units a day but her numbers are pretty good. I should be more aggressive with upping her dose but for the most part she's usually around 80-120. Hardest part with her is she gets into EVERYTHING. She literally ate through an aluminum can of cat food TWICE in the last 2 months.. so I've had to store things on top of the fridge instead of in drawers or whatever.. and she's too damn smart for her own good she can find anything. But yeah the eating through cans thing (FIEND) is another symptom of acro as far as I know (ravenous hunger).

I've contacted MSU though the trouble is with the vet. I brought in all the paperwork and the vet was totally lost. Maybe I'll try again with a different vet, though to be honest I'm out $700 today alone for her treatment today so it'll have to be pushed back again :(
 
You vet should be able to take a blood sample and send it to Michigan State University.
Or after your vet taking the sample you can send it to MSU.
You are correct that the real treatment for acromegaly is expensive. I only had MurrFee tested since I wanted to know why he required such a high dose. I did not want to be second guessing myself after the fact if I could have done more.
 
MSU won't take samples from "civilians" any more, I tried that last month. I just know I can't afford the treatment and I know all I can do is keep giving her high doses, so IDK if knowing would help right now, though she definitely has some kind of issue because she needs so much insulin. I'm really hoping this is just some passing nonsense and not some serious problem.. I mean her numbers have been great this year and this is the first time she's EVER acted like this and it's only been a day so fingers are crossed for now. She's totally nuts for food though so to see hair scoff at the food offering was really concerning.
 
I can only imagine what the insulin costs you. Our insulin is far cheaper, even less than your cost from Mark's Marine and I know what it was costing me when she was on 32u per day. When I look at Luna's spreadsheet, I don't see the same pattern as with Menace. I got absolutely no movement in her numbers at all for almost a year. Some dose increases caused a very tiny drop in readings for one day and then she went right back up again. She finally started to come down about a year into this journey and I recently had her down to 16u per day but then had to increase to 18u again. Luna is definitely getting some better numbers overall. With Menace, it's one step forward and 2 or 3 steps back lately. Royally frustrating. :arghh:

While Menace is hungry a lot, at least she isn't raiding cupboards and eating through aluminum cans. Gees that must be hard on her teeth! :nailbiting:
 
To save on cost many caretakers, including myself, used by Levemir and Relion's brand of either R or N insulin. I was up to 28 units Levemir and 22 units N. Others have used R which is shorting acting than N in addition to Levemir.
 
Got back from the vet. Things acute pancreatitis for today but is not sure. She's headed towards liver failure with an ALT of 480 or something and amalyse 1900. She's eating just fine now after all the anti nausea meds. Severe arthritis that she's had for years. Eeek. Seems fine right now though thankfully.
 
MrWorfMen's Mom said:
I can only imagine what the insulin costs you. Our insulin is far cheaper, even less than your cost from Mark's Marine and I know what it was costing me when she was on 32u per day. When I look at Luna's spreadsheet, I don't see the same pattern as with Menace. I got absolutely no movement in her numbers at all for almost a year. Some dose increases caused a very tiny drop in readings for one day and then she went right back up again. She finally started to come down about a year into this journey and I recently had her down to 16u per day but then had to increase to 18u again. Luna is definitely getting some better numbers overall. With Menace, it's one step forward and 2 or 3 steps back lately. Royally frustrating. :arghh:

While Menace is hungry a lot, at least she isn't raiding cupboards and eating through aluminum cans. Gees that must be hard on her teeth! :nailbiting:
Click to expand...

I do buy from Mark's. I'm at like $200 every 2 months + test strips + food, etc easy average $300 a month but she's worth it. Sorry to hear about Menace though it gives me hope maybe she doesn't have Acro (Luna anyways). Would just be another terrible thing for her to go through. We got her with diabetes and she was declawed and her teeth all messed up and it's been a rollercoaster since but she's real special.
 
Oh dear! I am so sorry to hear Luna's liver/? pancreas are causing her issues. Poor girl! Great that she is now eating though.

I can relate to the those costs. Our strips/syringes/lancets/food are more expensive than yours so any savings on insulin pretty much gets eaten away by this other stuff. It's obvious you have a bit of love affair going on with Luna. They are so worth the $ and the roller coaster ride even if some days you just want to pull your hair out! :)

Sending healing vines, thoughts for Luna along with some
black-cat-smiley-emoticon.gif
!
 
I'm happy to see her acting normal again. It was real weird. It's a definitive love affair haha. I thought I was gonna faint this morning as I've been having bad health problems this last month as well and the stress was eating me up, plus I got graduate school homework all day today so the vet visit was just a curveball. I got a beer now and a happy Luna and my wife's home so everythings better lol (and I'm still doing homework!). Thanks
 
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