New Diagnosis, Help Appreciated!

Bella & Liz

Bella & Liz

Member
Hello,
My cat was just recently diagnosed with diabetes after being on prednisone for a few months. Initially the vet sent me home with ProZinc at 1 unit every 12 hours, however after giving her 1 unit the first time she dipped from around 320 to 40, luckily I was able to catch her drop low in time and gave her honey which brought her back up. After that the vet told me to take a break from insulin and see if I could see any results from just changing her diet. While her glucose levels did improve, from usually high 200's, to high 100s I still felt like she was showing alot of symptoms (drinking tons, peeing tons, etc.) So I have just started her back up insulin at a much lower dose.

However I just am not super confident in knowing when to give insulin and when to hold back. I am probably playing it a bit safe due to my bad experience the first night. I just started up the spread sheet so there is only the information from today. Any help on how to dose cats that run a bit low would be great. I am currently using a pretty cheap glucose meter, true metrix GO. If you guys think any other meter would be better let me know. The vet wanted me to get a really expensive animal specific one but I just can't afford it. Its been a rough 6 months with vet bills!
 
Hi and welcome! I don't know anything about your specific type of meter, but most of us use human meters. Those pet ones are expensive and the strips cause a ton...we're used to using human numbers here, so it won't be a problem at all to use a human meter!

It looks like you're getting some incredible numbers from such a low dose! I have a few questions for you:
  • What are you feeding now? Is your kitty on a strict low carb diet?
  • What was the pred for?
  • Is she still taking the pred?
  • Any other health problems?
My guess is the diabetes is caused by the pred. We get that plenty of times here...steroids can cause this and usually when the cat goes off the steroids, a lot of times the diabetes goes away fairly fast.
 
After a bit of a battle I was able to switch her from dry food to low carb wet food (fancy feast/friskies). She was on pred for IBD/lymphomia for about 2 months, but she is no longer on it. She has a heart murmur and was pretty underweight about 6 months ago while in the process of trying to figure out the whole IBD thing (so many vet bills D=) She has been off the pred for about 4 weeks now.
 
Bella's numbers yesterday are looking good. Do you have her on a probiotic? That can make a huge difference for IBD kitties. A lot of folks around here use s. boulardii with good success. I like this one: https://www.chewy.com/animal-essentials-plant-enzyme/dp/49372, and there are a number of other ones that are great too. The important thing is giving it every day without fail. It takes some time to build up in their gut, and once that's happened, you want to keep it going so you don't trigger a flare up. It's cut down Sam's liquipoo tremendously. :confused:
 
@Djamila Not sure if you will see this because its been a week or so since I commented on this thread, but do you still use steroids to treat your cats IBD along with the probiotics? Bella isn't having loose poop, but all the sudden in the last few days she has started going only poop outside the litter box and thats usually an indicator that she isnt feeling too well. I ordered some probiotics and am just waiting for them to come in the mail, but I was wondering if maybe she needs steroids again?... All this stuff is too complicated!
 
I do not use steroids for Sam's IBD. I think they are way over-prescribed, and often unnecessary. However, treating it without steroids does require some extra work. The probiotic daily is essential, doing some work with food to try to sort out possible triggers, and finding ways to treat the inevitable flare ups.

So you're working on the probiotic. That's step one.

For food, some cats are very sensitive to the additives in commercial canned foods, so you may need to start working on introducing raw food (if the price is prohibitive, there are a couple of easy ways to make it at home (meat + water + supplement powder = healthy raw cat food for cheap!).

And finally, keeping some metro in the cupboard for a severe flare, and using Slippery Elm Bark for the occasional liquipoo episode.

And if that still doesn't keep things under control, there are other things you can try as well, but usually those three can get most cats to stay healthy the vast majority of the time.

It does feel overwhelming and complicated when you're first getting started. But once you figure out what works for Bella, it just turns into the normal routine and the stress part fades away. :bighug:
 
oops. sorry. Metronidazole. It's an antibiotic/anti inflammatory used to treat IBD in cats.
 
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