New here, please help, overwhelmed

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buddhasmom

Member Since 2016
I'm crying & too upset to read over all the rules & things, so forgive me. I have a cat named Buddha. He will be 14 yrs old next month. He suffers from severe IBD & has been more than a handful for the past 2-3 years. He refuses to use his litter box to poop, so I have to keep him confined most of the day & clean up poop from the floor, every day. In the past couple years, his weight has dropped from 10 lbs to 5.4 lbs. I'm doing my best to treat the IBD, (thanks to online forums & groups) but it's a very difficult condition to treat. On top of all this, I just received the news that he is diabetic. I got a copy of his bloodwork today & his glucose is 447mg. All other bloodwork is great. I know nothing about diabetes, but this seems crazy high since the normal range says 60-170mg. Is his high for a diabetic? What kind of numbers do you guys see? Vet wanted to try a change in diet & retest in 4 weeks. Do you think this is too long to wait? Should I just start insulin right away? I'm worried that the diet might not help anyways because I'm already feeding him a high protein, low carb diet because that's what he needs for IBD too. I'm only switching to a different flavor w/ the same brand & there will only be a 1% higher protein level & .33% lower carb level. I"m not sure if that's enough to make a difference. I can't really get any higher protein or lower carb level than that. The carbs will only be .93% in the new food. Is there anything else I can do to reduce glucose? Supplements? I'm dreading insulin because my cat is horrible w/ shots, regardless of the size needle & I'm not good at that kind of stuff. I hate all needles myself. I have a lot of anxiety.

Please help. PM me, repost my post in the appropriate place. Whatever you need to do. Prayers, positive vibes etc. I'm desperate. I don't know how I'm gonna handle all of this. I'm very overwhelmed. I've also been taking care of my husband this past year who has cancer. He is still going through treatment & we have to be at the hospital everyday. Today we found out they cancelled our health insurance because they "no longer offer that plan", so we've been upset & he's been on the phone for hours trying to get a new plan. So far, the only thing offered is gonna cost us A LOT more per month, that we can't afford. Sorry, for all this unrelated stuff, but like I said, I'm just really upset & I needed to vent. Thanks for reading this.
 
hello buddhasmom. Welcome to the forum. There are a lot of great members here to help you out. What are you currently feeding buddah and what is the new suggested food? Are you currently testing his blood glucose? I suggest you start. That way you can monitor any changes a change in diet may have. Also, levels taken at the vet are often inflated due to stress. You can use a human glucometer to measure his BG level. It will read lower than a pet meter but there are reference ranges and you can still see trends. I'm sure other members will be commenting. Take a deep breath. You're in the right place.
 
Just a few more questions. Is Buddha on any medications/supplements for the IBD, maybe a steroid of some type?
 
If there is a protein he can tolerate, you can add 1 ounce of that protein to 5 ounces of the food, mix well and portion out to improve the protein:fat:carbohydrate ratios.

At least it didn't read so high they couldn't give you a number (on a human glucometer, that would be over 600 mg/dL; on an AlphaTrak II, that would be over 750 mg/dL.)

If you can't change the diet, you're going to have to do insulin or essentially, he'll starve to death because he can't use the carbohydrate in the food you're feeding.

The insulins we've found most effective for cats are ProZinc (check prices online as many vets upcharge this at the clinic), BCP PZI (vet faxes in Rx; you contact company to purchase), Lantus, and Levemir. While Vetsulin/Caninsulin and Humulin or Novolin NPH may be offered, they can require testing and dosing every 8 hours to get decent control of the glucose. We suggest ordering Lantus or Levemir from Canada, in the 5 pen packs for the most economical use, however the upfront price is still quite steep.
 
Thank you guys so much for reading & responding. <3 Buddha is currently eating Nature's Variety Instinct canned rabbit. I am switching to the same brand in Venison flavor, which is, like I said, a tiny increase in protein & tiny decrease in carbs than the rabbit. He was previously eating Science Diet Sensitive Stomach Kibble & Hill's Prescription A/D canned food for about a year. This wasn't my choice, but in Nov 2014 something happened. We still aren't sure what, but he stopped eating & he had to be hospitalized several times to receive fluids. The vet started him on those foods & I was scared to change it after that. He started losing more weight this year & was still having issues w/ loose stools & IBD, so we put him on Budesonide (steriod) in Nov 2015. Vet said he really needed to come off of those foods, so I did my research & started him on the NV rabbit in Nov 2015. So, he's only been on the canned rabbit food for about 6.5 weeks. I'm sure that crappy kibble & Hill's A/D food were high in carbs & probably are what made him diabetic. If diet is going to make a difference in the diabetes, about how long does it take to notice a difference? Maybe he just hasn't been off of the crappy foods for long enough? Also, we are weaning him off the Budesonide until we get his diabetes under control. He is not on any other supplements or medications.
 
please repost your message in the feline health forum. More people will see it there. There are people here that have cats with diabetes and ibd. To me 4 weeks seems like a long time to wait to be retested especially since you have been feeding a low carb food and your cat is so thin. My cat's BG came down mostly in the first three days after taking him off dry food. Weaning him off the steroid may help his bg. Perhaps that is why your vet wants to wait. please post in health and use a title that includes ibd, buddha being very thin, just diagnosed diabetic and your vet wanting to wait, help. Use the ? icon.
 
billysmom (GA) said:
please repost your message in the feline health forum. More people will see it there. There are people here that have cats with diabetes and ibd. To me 4 weeks seems like a long time to wait to be retested especially since you have been feeding a low carb food and your cat is so thin. My cat's BG came down mostly in the first three days after taking him off dry food. Weaning him off the steroid may help his bg. Perhaps that is why your vet wants to wait. please post in health and use a title that includes ibd, buddha being very thin, just diagnosed diabetic and your vet wanting to wait, help. Use the ? icon.
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Thank you. I will do that.
 
Hi buddhasmom, and welcome.
Trust me, we've all been through that overwhelmed phase, to different extents and for different reasons, when we got the diabetes diagnosis. If you glance through previous intros, you'll see the word "overwhelmed" used quite often. But this forum is full of knowledgeable and supportive fellow cat owners who can help you through!

My kitty was initially diagnosed with a BG of 420, and is now managed through diet alone. You'll see a lot of people come here with numbers in the 400s and 500s, so yours is not way out of line. There's no good predictor on whether you'll have to go to insulin, or be able to manage through diet - but the good news is that insulin is very easy to give and most kitties don't care about the shots at all, so if you do need it, it's not that big of a deal once you get the routine down.

It is a good thing to do the diet change first and then see where buddha's BG is before starting insulin, otherwise you risk it going too low when you make multiple changes at once. Once you get through the overwhelmed stage, I recommend learning how to test the BG yourself. There is a lot of information about that around this site, such as http://www.felinediabetes.com/bg-test.htm. Home testing is much more accurate than at the vet's when your kitty is stressed. You can also monitor it across the day, and over several days, which gives a better picture of what's going on than a single test at the vet's. If you do that for a couple weeks, and ask for advice here, you should have a great idea what you need to do going forward before you ever go back to your next vet appointment. And then if you do have to start insulin, you'll be a step ahead already having the monitoring down.

Welcome, and ask away on anything that comes up. There are a lot of caring people here who will point you in the right direction.
 
Hi Cheryl and Buddha!

Welcome to FDMB. First...take a deep breath. The diabetes diagnosis is a stressful one but having dealt with IBD and diabetes, I will tell you that dealing diabetes is a piece of cake compared to dealing with IBD.

Shenandoah said:
It is a good thing to do the diet change first and then see where buddha's BG is before starting insulin, otherwise you risk it going too low when you make multiple changes at once.
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Sorry but I could not disagree more. The longer a cat is allowed to stay at high numbers, the more resistance they build to insulin. If he's been on NV Instinct low carb for 6.5 weeks and he's still in the 400s, he needs insulin.

Budesonide, in many cats, does not affect the BG like prednisilone can. I don't know when his last labs were before this but if it's been awhile, the diabetes can also cause weight loss.

If the budesonide is a major component of his treatment and helping him feel well, if he were my kitty, I'd rather leave him on it and start insulin. His pancreas might just need a little support for a while.

I'd also suggest talking to your vet about lantus or levemir. And if your vet doesn't want to start insulin, I would suggest a second opinion.

I'll track you down on Health later today but just wanted to find you and toss out some ideas.

And learning to home test is extremely important. You might also find Buddha does better with shots than you think. The needle is tiny.

Don't forget to breathe.:):bighug:
 
Marje and Gracie said:
Sorry but I could not disagree more. The longer a cat is allowed to stay at high numbers, the more resistance they build to insulin. If he's been on NV Instinct low carb for 6.5 weeks and he's still in the 400s, he needs insulin.
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I defer to your FAR greater expertise than mine!
I was just thinking of cases we've seen where people changed both diet and started insulin, and ended up hypo. But that is usually a much more dramatic diet change, so I can see that it might not be worth the wait in this case.
 
Shenandoah said:
I defer to your FAR greater expertise than mine!
I was just thinking of cases we've seen where people changed both diet and started insulin, and ended up hypo. But that is usually a much more dramatic diet change, so I can see that it might not be worth the wait in this case.
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Usually, the recommendation is that if your kittie is on insulin all ready and you have not change his diet, testing is extremely important as the BG's can drop as much as 100 points overnight just by diet change alone so, monitoring is very very important because the kittie's dose could be too high once the BG fall.
 
Marje and Gracie said:
If the budesonide is a major component of his treatment and helping him feel well, if he were my kitty, I'd rather leave him on it and start insulin. His pancreas might just need a little support for a while.
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Agreed. *If* the budesonide is managing the IBD, then I absolutely would leave him on it to not rock the boat. If it is not, that is a different story, and it might be worth getting it out of the picture (tapering off slowly if so). Can't say for sure without knowing more.

Hang in there, you are not alone.
Sandi.
 
I would not stop/taper the budesonide. It is an accepted IBD treatment. My MurrFee is presently on it and in the past I have had other diabetic cats on budesonide. For some to raised BG increased insulin needs but it easy to work with budesonide.
 
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