New & Have ???'s

[Speckybaby]

Hi Everyone!
I'm Kim & my 15 yr old Speck was diagnosed Fri. 9/16/11. His level was at 440, vet started him on 4 units daily - 2 units 12 hrs apart of Humulin N, said to change his diet to low carb high protien. Bring him back in a week for another level check.
I was completely freaked out - I thought it was a uti, he started peeing outside box. He was on dry food during day & 1can of merrick in pm. Took away the dry, he could care less. So, have been doing what mostly what vet said - feeding 1 can merrick in am, giving shot - leave for work - come home, feed 1 can merrick, give shot. I do not have a meter yet, so I cannot home test. I found this site, which is amazing! made me feel a lot better & really has given me some great advice. But I have a couple questions I'm hoping to get some help with.

First, I'm not sure my vet knows what she's doing. We've taken our 4 yr old doberman there for seizures and we see another vet, who is awesome. Unfortunately, he's semi-retireied & not taking on any new patients, so we're stuck with Dr. B.
When I talked with her @ home testing, she told me it is a waste of time, as the meter cannot read a cats blood??
My fiancee has experience with diabetes & we're pretty terrified about giving him the shots without checking his level. We have a meter coming & will start checking once we get it.

Also, vet said was pretty insistent we switch to the prescription food from them. It was way too expensive & I'm leery of switching him. He will eat almost anything, but really seems to know what will not agree with him, he just refuses to eat it.
I feel pretty confident with merrick and its affordable. Does anyone else use merrick?

Oh, we're located in OH, Medina County
Thank you for any guidance!!
Kim & Speck

 

[Heather and Raja (GA)]

Welcome and glad you found this site!

I know it's all overwhelming but before you know it you'll be an old pro at this.

First testing is the best thing to do, just like a human you don't shoot blindly there is just no reason not to test before giving insulin. Wal-mart has a cheap meter that works wonderfully or you can buy a more expensive one. It's up to you but they all work the same. If you can get test then you don't need to take Speck in to the vet to check BG. Remember too that some cats don't like the vet and stress can and does raise the BG.

Now on to the food. There is a food chart called binkeys food chart (dont have the link but search for it and youll find it) and there are tons of wet food you can chose from, a prescription diet is not needed. I personally used friskies canned pate for 3 yrs until recently when I switched to 9 lives. I can't tell you about merrick, never tried it.

I personally would talk to your vet about lantus, there are a lot of people here who use lantus and love it me included.

 

[Jennifer and Katie]

Welcome to the site!

I feed my diabetic cat Merrick brand's Cowboy Cookout. It has about 5% carbs. Katie really enjoys this food, as does my civvi cat. I've also found that it seems to lower her BG (blood glucose) just by her eating it. Not enough, but it definitely helps.

As for the meter, I use the Relion micro from Walmart, and I haven't had any problems with it. Katie has gotten to the point where, as long as I'm doing the right ear, she'll just lay down and purr while I'm testing her.

Glad you found this site; the people here are very helpful^^

 

[Carl & Polly & Bob (GA)]

Hi Kim,
Welcome to the family!
There is a link in my sig below my name that says "Binky's", and if you click on it, it will take you to a page full of nutritional information and links. There are 2 in particular you should look at which list a couple hundred or more canned foods, sorted by name brand, that will show you the carb content, calories, protein content, etc of each flavor.
What you are looking for is a carb content below 10%, and the lower the better. There should be Merrick foods on one of the lists. I'll bet your vet prescription food is on there too. If so, print it out and share it with your vet so that he knows there are many foods that are actually better for a diabetic cat than the 'scrip stuff they want you to use.
You already know that dry food is a no-no, which is great! One word of caution, and this is why you should home test as soon as you can - switching to a low carb diet will lower Speck's BG significantly. You may find quickly that he doesn't need as much insulin as he's getting right now based on what his numbers are once you start testing.
As far as your vet goes, she might not be an "expert" on feline diabetes, but not too many vets are. Vets need to know lots about a huge number of diseases and about lots of different animals, and it isn't practical for them to know everything about any single thing. Many don't have a great number of diabetic patients, and like any condition, unless they have the time to keep up with the latest treatments and research, it's hard for them to be on top of everything. It's discouraging that she would tell you that home testing is a waste of time and that you can't test a cat's blood with a human meter. Home testing is the single most important part of successfully managing feline diabetes, and thousands of kitties get home tested every day! It is the only way to know for sure that the dose you are using is safe to shoot. Some people have success after testing and treating at home for a while with showing your data to the vet so that she can see how effective it is. An indication that your vet may not be up to date with feline diabetes is that she prescribed Humulin N. There are other insulins that are much more effective for cats, like Lantus, Levemir and Prozinc/PZI. They are more gentle and longer-lasting than Humulin. Long lasting is important because cats metabolize (I think that's the proper word) insulin twice as fast as dogs would, and using a longer lasting insulin helps make sure the insulin is working all day long. The vet did get the schedule right though, you want to give 2 doses a day, 12 hours apart, and the doses should be the same for each shot.
There will be other along to talk specifically about insulin types, and it may make sense to talk to your vet once you've heard from those people about switching to a more cat-friendly insulin. If your vet goes along with that, you might also be able to convince her about home testing and non-prescription food too. Being able to get your vet to get on the same page as you will be a long-term plus if it's possible.

Feel free to ask all the questions you can think of. Somebody here will know the answer. This place is amazing!

Carl in SC