New member -IBS, CKD and now Diabetes... Help!

[Tsukaia]

Hi, I'm hoping to find someone who can help me.

My 12y/o cat has had a rough couple of years. It all started with what vet thinks was pancreatitis two years ago, so they put her on digestive diet (Hills ID), she had a similar problem last year again, but this time it looks like it was fatty liver, soh herliver enzymes have been going up and down, same with her appetite, from a blood work to check on her liver they saw her kidneys were now having problems, so we started with subq's twice a week and at the same time they realize she may have IBS and that's why sometimes she doesn't want to eat, they told me the only way to know for sure is to open her up, but with her kidneys she may not tolerate the anesthesia, so we opted to put her on prednisolone and see what happened. She did pretty good on it but when trying to weed her out after two weeks her appetite diminished a lot, vet said we could keep her on a low dose of prednisolone, so I have had her on a third of a 5mg pill a day. Last blood work this week showed her glucose went up so vet wants me to weed her off the prednisolone and change her diet to a diabetic one to see if we can control the glucose before doing anything else.

I feel overwhelmed, scared and guilty as hell for giving her the prednisolone but without it she won't eat ... At this point I don't know what's the best thing to do for her, what kind of food should I give her? Is the pro-plan for diabetes good for kidneys, IBS and diabetes? I feel like the options to keep her comfortable and happy are closing and I'm freaking out because she is my everything...

Anyone with the same issues could help me get started with how to help my baby?

Thank you

 

[JanetNJ]

Hi, I'm hoping to find someone who can help me.

My 12y/o cat has had a rough couple of years. It all started with what vet thinks was pancreatitis two years ago, so they put her on digestive diet (Hills ID), she had a similar problem last year again, but this time it looks like it was fatty liver, soh herliver enzymes have been going up and down, same with her appetite, from a blood work to check on her liver they saw her kidneys were now having problems, so we started with subq's twice a week and at the same time they realize she may have IBS and that's why sometimes she doesn't want to eat, they told me the only way to know for sure is to open her up, but with her kidneys she may not tolerate the anesthesia, so we opted to put her on prednisolone and see what happened. She did pretty good on it but when trying to weed her out after two weeks her appetite diminished a lot, vet said we could keep her on a low dose of prednisolone, so I have had her on a third of a 5mg pill a day. Last blood work this week showed her glucose went up so vet wants me to weed her off the prednisolone and change her diet to a diabetic one to see if we can control the glucose before doing anything else.

I feel overwhelmed, scared and guilty as hell for giving her the prednisolone but without it she won't eat ... At this point I don't know what's the best thing to do for her, what kind of food should I give her? Is the pro-plan for diabetes good for kidneys, IBS and diabetes? I feel like the options to keep her comfortable and happy are closing and I'm freaking out because she is my everything...

Anyone with the same issues could help me get started with how to help my baby?

Thank you

Hi! Welcome. I have no experience with ibs, but my cat does have diabetes and ckd. Do you have a copy of his most recent labs? What was the glucose?

So you are going to want to feed a wet food that is both low in carb (under 10 percent) and low in phosphorus (under 1 percent). I feed weruva foods as they have a lot of selections that fit the bill.

This is what I feed
Weruva slide and serve pate foods Family Food (.97 phosphorus and 0 carb). Also Jeopurrdy Chicken (0.97 P 6.1 carb)
Goody stew shoes 0.71 phosphorus, 8.5 carb. This one is a big hit

Weruva Steak Frites (0.57 phosphorus 5.5 carb although I take out any big pieces of potatoes to try to limit the carbs just a bit)

Weruva LA isla Bonita - phosphorus 0.77 carb 4.5 (used to like, not a favorite anymore)
Glam and punk 1% carb, 0.93 phosphorous.

Weruva paw lickin chicken 3.3 carb 0.82 p and
Press your lunch 5.9 carb. 0.82 phosphorous
Bff play Laugh Out Loud chicken and lamb 7.7 carb, 0.82 phosphorous
BFF play destiny (chicken and duck) 0.87 phosphorus 7.7 carb
Bff play chicken cherish 0.71 phosphorus 7.6 carb
Bff play best buds chicken and beef 7.9 carb 0.9 phosphorus
Bff play chicken Checkmate. 7.7 carb 0.7 phos
New favorite On the Cat Wok 3.8 carb 0.74 phos

 

[Critter Mom]

I feel overwhelmed, scared and guilty as hell for giving her the prednisolone but without it she won't eat ...

Please don't feel guilty about the steroid. First and foremost, your baby needs to eat. Finding a way to get food into a cat with eating difficulties pretty much trumps everything else.



Plenty of cats get steroid treatment without developing blood glucose issues, so your choice was made in good faith. There's no way of telling in advance whether a kitty might develop sugar regulation problems. You made the best decision you could at the time.

I'm very glad you've found FDMB, and I hope we can help you both. Many members here have kitties with multiple conditions who may be able to share useful experience. We can also point you in the direction of other reliable and helpful information resources. Talking of which...

we opted to put her on prednisolone and see what happened. She did pretty good on it but when trying to weed her out after two weeks her appetite diminished a lot, vet said we could keep her on a low dose of prednisolone, so I have had her on a third of a 5mg pill a day. Last blood work this week showed her glucose went up so vet wants me to weed her off the prednisolone and change her diet to a diabetic one to see if we can control the glucose before doing anything else.

There is an excellent site called ibdkitties.net where you'll find a great deal of helpful info and advice for managing that side of things. With regard to what you're dealing with right now, I'd recommend starting with the information on steroids (link below). In particular, have a look at the section about budesonide. I'd also suggest asking your vet whether budesonide might be a suitable treatment for your girl (typically doesn't impact BG levels in the way that prednisolone can). If yes, then she'd be able to get the steroid support she needs to eat better with (hopefully) minimal risk of negatively impacting BG.

IBD - Introduction to Steroids

A thought to bear in mind as you go forward: should it turn out that your little one were to develop diabetes, treatment for the diabetes can be worked around the treatment needs of other conditions (e.g. if your kitty needed to eat a food that was higher than what's ideal for a diabetic, insulin doses can be adjusted to accommodate that. Also, diabetes is very treatable.

What's your little one's name?


Mogs
.

 

[Tsukaia]

Thank you Critter mom! I took a look at Weruva and I'm gonna head to Petsmart tomorrow to buy a few and see if she will eat any of them... Today I tried to introduce her to the Pro Plan DM (dry) and she ate it ok, but after an hour or so she threw up and now she won't eat her dinner, obviously in my neuroticism I called the vet and she told me that I needed to introduce the new food super slowly... This will be a bumpy ride I feel...

Mogs, I'll ask my vet about budesonide and check out that page. And thank you for your comforting words , I guess I'm super overwhelmed, I'm just getting used to the Kidney disease treatment, then also the IBD, and not knowing what to expect or how she will react has me very anxious, she is my first and only catchild.
Her name is Tsuki

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

As others have noted, you can manage FD (feline diabetes) around a steroid. Prednisolone will have far less effect on blood glucose (BG) numbers vs prednisone. As for diagnosing IBD, while it's not a definitive test, did the vet suggest an ultrasound? The biggest issue with diagnostic testing is that you need to know if your cat has IBD vs lymphoma. The tests can be invasive but a surgical biopsy is not always needed. They may be able to get a biopsy via an endoscopy.

The key issue with FD is a low carb diet. The foods that Janet recommended are all low carb and low phosphorus (which is important for kidney issues). One way that your food options can be increased is if you use a phosphorus binder. However, it depends on how advanced the kidney disease is. With IBD, you need to consider novel proteins. What's "novel" may depend on what you've been feeding your kitty. I have a cat with IBD. He'd been fed only chicken and turkey for years. Novel for him includes pork, lamb, venison, and rabbit. I feed my cat's a combination of a raw diet and some canned (ZiwiPeak). I would discourage you from using dry cat food -- the carbohydrate level is generally too high. You want to keep the carbs under 10% and most of us use foods that are considerably less than 10%.

 

[Tsukaia]

As others have noted, you can manage FD (feline diabetes) around a steroid. Prednisolone will have far less effect on blood glucose (BG) numbers vs prednisone. As for diagnosing IBD, while it's not a definitive test, did the vet suggest an ultrasound? The biggest issue with diagnostic testing is that you need to know if your cat has IBD vs lymphoma. The tests can be invasive but a surgical biopsy is not always needed. They may be able to get a biopsy via an endoscopy.

She got an ultrasound where they noticed several abnormalities (including something in her intestines), from which they decided to do needle biopsies of her liver, splin and kidney, everything came out "ok" (meaning no lymphoma in any of those) but they can't do an endoscopy because of how far the part of her intestines is (specialist said she wouldn't be able to reach with the endoscope that far)... So the options became surgery or prednisolone. We all don't think she would make it through an invasive test so we went for the pred.

I have several challenges with her, one of them being that she is used to eat during the day and that's why I leave kibble for her. She also really don't eat big amounts of wet food in one seating, so I have had to distribute her calories through the day to make sure she eats enough (her liver shows signs of fatty liver as well, can't have her lose weight too fast) ... I did find some automatic feeders for wet food (keeps it fresh for a longer while) , I'm gonna try to get her used to those to be able to eat when I'm not here. She used to be a dry food free fed (she is my first cat, I didn't know any better), and since then I can't seem to weed her out of eating dry food during the day, if there's no food on her plate when she is hungry, she starts retching

 

[Larry and Kitties]

Prednisolone will have far less effect on blood glucose (BG) numbers vs prednisone.

I never heard of this. Can you provide a reference?