New member - insulin not working

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Laura w MeiMei

Laura w MeiMei

New Member
Hi everyone,

New diagnose about 1 month ago for MeiMei. 1 unit of Prozinc x2 day. Seemed like it was working based on behavior (but had not tested). Initial test in vet was 400. Then in the last week or so seems like insulin was not working, based on behavior. Started to test. Numbers are consistently high 389-409. Tested before insulin and about 6 hours post insulin a few times. Will reach out to vet tmrw. Thoughts? Could the insulin be bad? Is it not enough?
 
Hello and welcome to you and MeiMei. There are several possibilities why an individual test or two is high. Cats typically don't stay with their initial dose forever. Here we start with a low dose, then increase when the test data tell us we need to do.

Good for you on starting to home test. Can you tell me what brand of meter you are using? Some read higher than others. There are a few other things that it's be great if you could put in your signature - so we don't have to keep asking. Details on that are in this post:
New? How You Can Help Us Help You!

The second thing to help us is to put that test data in a spreadsheet, details in that post I linked. From looking at your test data, we can tell if the dose needs to be increased, kept the same, or reduced.
 
Thank you for the reply. I put info in my signature and linked a spreadsheet. Think I did it correctly.
Using ReliOn Premier (human meter).
 
Your spreadsheet is up and working just fine!!

If MeiMei's dose has been the same for a month, it's very likely that she needs more insulin. We evaluate the effectiveness of the dose on a weekly basis unless the test data indicates you need to reduce the dose. There is information on Prozinc in the sticky notes at the top of the Prozinc forum. You may want to review the information on dosing methods. If you want to increase, we do so in 0.25u increments. It's helpful to have syringes that are marked in 0.5u amounts (which is the smallest divisions you can get).

I'm tagging @Suzanne & Darcy who is one of our members who is most familiar with Prozinc dosing.
 
I've increased MeiMeis insulin from 1 to 1.5. I did read about not shooting the excess back into the vial. That is something I have definitely been doing. Should I get a new vial of insulin?
 
I suspect your insulin is fine.

I would not routinely increase your cat's dose by 0.5u. It can be way too easy to fly past what would be a good dose if you are increasing the dose by larger increments. You can order U40 syringes with half unit divisions online.
 
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