New member - help with insulin Oct 8th 2022

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Melanie corsetti

Member Since 2022
Good morning everyone! Newbie here . Finally was able to start home testing our fur baby Motley yesterday. He was diagnosed September 19th 2022. He is an 11 year old Maine coon mix .

I did a curve yesterday and his number got as low as 3.6 during the day after I administered 2 units of Glargine that morning. Before his shot he was at 4.8.

We feed at 9am/pm and give his insulin at 9:30am/pm. I checked his numbers after he ate about 5 small pieces of his Royal Canin dietetic wet food (only way to get his number in the morning is if he is distracted by food) He was at 6.4. I thought that was low and did not administer his insulin, but with guidance from another member I checked his blood around 10 and his number rose to 8.4. I just gave him his 2 units of Glargine.

Is there a number I should be looking for that is unsafe to administer insulin at? I feel like I have read so much information at this point it is confusing me on what to do. Although 3.4 was the lowest he was at yesterday, to me it is close to being so low that maybe I shouldn’t have gave his insulin yesterday but I’m not sure.

I have our couple week checkup at the vet this month on the 17th, but until then I don’t want to give our Motley a dangerous dose of insulin if not needed.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/103w0KPN32b9Mgh5zjY0lvmp80EyeyO8r68cmyxu5g8k/edit
 
Glad to see.you posting over here!

I had replied on Facebook, so copy/pasting here:

The 3.6 you got yesterday is technically a 0.25U reduction - because the glycobalance is considered high carbs, you have to follow the dosing method where reductions are taken when the cat goes under 5mmol. So moving forward your full dose would be 1.75U until he earns another reduction by dropping below 5mmol, or his numbers creep up and he needs an increase (we can help with that).

Right now you don't have a ton of data, and his numbers are low enough that our usual "don't shoot below 200 (11mmol)" doesn't quite apply. The good news is it looks like his dose is close to good. Since you were able to safely shoot the 4.8 yesterday, it's likely you are safe to shoot anything 5 or higher. Under 5, skip or delay the shot til he rises above 5 (if you can be off schedule).

That said, yesterday was only one data point. In his BG range, just test as much as you can. If you can get him onto a truly low carb diet that would be great! Just do not transition food yet, you'll need help from us to do it safely. His numbers are so low that a 5-10% difference in carbs can easily be a hypo.
 
The other thing I'll mention is you're using FDSGs spreadsheet. I'll tag @Chris & China (GA) and @Bandit's Mom if you need help converting it to ours - ours has another tab that automatically converts readings to mg/dL which is the units we're most used to.

If youre a member of both groups, know that you will likely get different advice. Our advice is to pick one group and stick with it, because the different advice makes things difficult to help you.
 
Welcome. When you switch to our spreadsheet the bg numbers will convert to the US numbers which most of us use. We also hope you will use one of our dosing methods. Please also add a signature.
 
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