need some guidance from experienced eyes!

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Jen and Putty

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Putty was on lantus for 10 days, went into remission for 3 months, then started having symptoms again. I have transitioned him from the grain-free blue buffalo wilderness dry food to wet food only and restarted lantus. his numbers are kinda wonky and I have had quite a few instances where I can't get blood to test (that's why there are blanks on my ss) I have read the articles about tight regulation protocol and the storage shed but I'm not sure that I completely understand them. I don't think I should shoot tonight (bg of 94) but I am worried about the rebound effect if I change his dose before 3 days on the same dose. Please steer me in the right direction!
 
i'd be leaning towards no shot myself unless you can get a couple tests in tonight after the shot?

let me see if i can get some more lantus eyes for you because to be completely honest, i'm not that fond of telling others what to shoot when it comes to lantus, even though i've been doing this dance so long now
 
I'm one of the Lantus "eyes" that Cindy recruited to stop by.

Do you have any flexibility with your schedule for tomorrow? If so, you can stall. You'd want to test every 30 min. to see if numbers are rising. Generally, if you don't have much data (and you really don't), we don't recommend giving a shot unless BG tests are above 150 and you can monitor for the next several hours (and have strips and high carb food in the house in case you need to steer the numbers). This post on handling low pre-shots may be of some help. It looks to me as though you're seeing the effects of getting Putty on a low carb, canned food diet.
 
I won't be home tomorrow so I think I should skip tonight's dose and then shoot 0.25 unit if he is over 200 in the morning? Does that sound reasonable?
 
just tried to check him again. failed 6 pokes and let him go. he is so good-natured I kept going after 3 but I didn't wait til he was upset to quit :sad:
 
what a good sport! make sure you give him a treat for all those pokes!

see if sienne comes back to answer your question. i think your plan for morning sounds fine, but she has a lot more experience than me. just fyi, once you have a diabetic cat you have to always feed them a low-carb diabetic cat diet. keep him on the canned low carb always now.
 
Jen and Putty said:
I won't be home tomorrow so I think I should skip tonight's dose and then shoot 0.25 unit if he is over 200 in the morning? Does that sound reasonable?
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I was thinking the same thing as Julie. Your plans sound good to me. Let's see is Sienne comes back.
Maybe, he'll only need a little bit of insulin support and soon be back in remission.

Jen and Putty said:
just tried to check him again. failed 6 pokes and let him go. he is so good-natured I kept going after 3 but I didn't wait til he was upset to quit :sad:
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And, what a good boy cat_pet_icon Always give him extra praise and lovings and/or treats for tests whether successful or not.
 
I don't have any advice about dosage....I'm brand new here. But I feel for you and good natured kitty trying to get a blood sample....don't know if you're warming that ear well before you try the sticking, but it has made all the difference in the world for my kitty. Spending just a couple of minutes to get it warmed up and get the blood flowing really helped us.
 
I got him off insulin before by switching to grain-free dry food. I think maybe it had too much carb to keep him OTJ? He is at 117 this morning so I don't know if I should give him the 0.25 unit I had planned. I won't be home until about 1pm.
 
Jen and Putty said:
just tried to check him again. failed 6 pokes and let him go.
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Warm his ear really good. Be sure you have something extremely firm inside his ear (most use rice socks but you could use a tennis ball). Hold the ear tightly against the sock, tennis ball, whatever. If the ear is not braced firmly, the lancet will just push the ear back and you won't get an adequate prick.

Lana
 
Even grain free dry food is too high in carbs for diabetics. I believe the Blue Wilderness dry is somewhere in the 20+% range. Diabetic cats need less than 10% carbs at all times, even when they no longer need insulin. That's why a lot of times we refer to our OTJ kitties as "diet controlled." A diabetic cat will always be diabetic, even if they are OTJ.

Is there a reason why you went back to the dry food? If you need food to leave out while you're away, you can freeze portions of canned food and leave them out to thaw. I use an auto-feeder to release the food at Bandit's meal time because he's the type of cat that will sit there and gnaw on the frozen nugget of food.

I think he's likely going back into remission from the diet change. Without much data, I don't think I'd shoot any insulin with at 112 preshot if you won't be home to test.
 
He has always been on dry in an auto-feeder and when I put him on the grain-free he no longer needed insulin, so we stayed with that. Now it looks like he is (hopefully) going to be diet controlled on wet food :-D I just tested a little bit ago and got a 74. He hasn't had insulin for about 28 hours. I will keep a close eye on him for the next few days/weeks. Thanks everyone for your help!
 
I may be wrong, but when I looked at Putty's spreadsheet last night, I had a feeling that he would soon be in remission again, that maybe he just needed some temporary support for some reason. We'll see. Finger Crossed.
It looks like skipping this morning, was the thing to do. :mrgreen:
 
We think he got into some carby dog food and it took him a while to get back to normal. We have switched him to wet and a little raw, and he is back off insulin! Thanks everyone for your help!!
 
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