New Member- Iona

[Iona]

My cat Iona was diagnosed on 11/8/2022. She went into the ER because she stopped eating and had diarrhea, when her bloodwork came back her BG was 500, but no ketones in the urine. I am so thankful to have found this community and have been reading as much as I can. I have setup her spreadsheet but there is not much data yet because I was just able to pick her up from the vet yesterday morning.

Lantus: The instructions from the vet were to give her 3 units every 12 hours after her meals and if she does not eat to only give 1 unit, being the daughter of diabetics I am not comfortable giving an injection without testing first and just hoping for the best so I bought a meter (ReliOn Premier Classic) and all the needed supplies. I am planning on doing a curve next week. Luckily she has been doing pretty well with the ear sticks so far. How often should I be testing her BG other than AMPS and PMPS?

Food: Right now she is eating Purina DM dry from the vet, I have ordered Young Again Mature Zero and am awaiting delivery. I know wet is best but she is extremely picky and has refused to eat when I have tried to switch her in the past. The vet's instructions were Purina DM only, only 2 times a day with no snacks but I have seen the recommendation here for spreading it out over 4 feedings/snacks.

Her only other health issue is feline herpes that she has had since she was a kitten which causes frequent upper respiratory issues (sneezing, runny nose, runny/goopy eyes), she is on a Lysine gel (Viralys) to help with that. I know it has sugar in it but if she is not on it she tends to have many more flare ups. Any recommendations on diabetic friendly lysine supplements?

Again, so thankful to have found this community and all of the information provided.

 

[SassyCat04]

I'm very new to this also. I'm so sorry for you and your kitty have to face all this - it's overwhelming. BUT welcome to the group! From my experience you'll find lots of help and words of encouragement and advice from experienced people. Follow up with your regular vet quickly. That's always going to be important. ER vets are not going to give you the long term care and follow through you need. So that's a priority. I would say stick with the DM food for now - You have time to figure out what food you can switch to long term with some research but for now, at least in my opinion, the prescription food is one thing that's an easy thing to switch to. If your kitty is a kibble eater then that's one thing you've got to make a priority to change. Also try not to make too many drastic changes at once - this is all going to be a learning curve and a delicate balance. You'll get it - you've got this!! The DM dry is a good bridge from regular dry food but you NEED to switch to an all wet diet or at least as close to it as you can get.

The two meals a day is meh advice. Many people do it because it's easy but cat's are not designed to eat two large meals a day whether they are diabetic or not. So some smaller snacks are good and do not restrict food at night especially in a diabetic. I've read this as well as this is the advice from my vet. They need to be able to regulate. So in my house as of now at night is the only time mine have any kibble and that's probably what I'm sticking with. Any kibble is not perfect but it is what it is.

As far as what I'm finding out - how often you need to test blood glucose at home depends on your cat. You need to test in the morning and at night before meals and before insulin. I did that for the first week and two days ago I did my first curve at home. My vet just advised I don't need to test daily anymore because my boy is doing so well. So depending on how you're cat is doing is really going to decide how often you have to BG test.

Everyone on here loves the spread sheet! Haven't' set mine up yet. But I did by a diabetic log book on Amazon. Partly because I have a cat sitter and a husband who is going to be responsible for my boy and EVERYONE needs to be able to see exactly what's going on and chart it down. I want no mistakes!! I'd also recommend you get a baby scale so you can monitor weight. Pick a day of the week or a day of the month depending on how close you need to watch. It's much more accurate than stepping on the scale and subtracting your weight.

Best of luck with your boy!! I'm sure many more with hop on here and give you great advice! Like I said I'm only a week into this myself and my advice is limited. But I can encourage and cheerlead

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Welcome to FDMB!

Not to counteract your vet's advice but 3.0u of insulin is a HUGE starting dose especially since you had a pre-shot test result of 99 yesterday. The good news is that your vet recommended a good insulin for cats!

There are two dosing methods we use for Lantus. The published research method is the Tight Regulation Protocol (TR). The authors used a weight based formula to calculate the starting dose (initial dose = 0.25 x cat's ideal weight in kilograms). This usually rounds out to around 1.0u. However, with TR, your cat MUST be on a low carb, canned food diet. The other method for dosing, Start Low Go Slow (SLGS) and was developed here. You generally start your cat at 0.5u if on a low carb, canned food diet or 1.0u if on dry food. In other words, 3.0u is a whopping dose. It may help to keep in mind that Iona was likely stressed out being at the vets office and her blood glucose (BG) numbers were likely affected by stress.

The DM dry food is quite high in carbohydrates. It is likely inflating Iona's numbers. It's great that you already figured that out. There is an additional dry food that is lower in carb -- Dr. Elsey's Clean Protein. You will want to transition Iona slowly over to the Young Again. Some cats have a bit of a GI upset when switching to Young Again. If you've not seen Lisa Pierson, DVM's website on feline nutrition, it's a site that has great information. She has a section on transitioning a dry food kitty to canned food that you might want to take a look at. There are also some freeze dried raw foods (Stella & Chewy, ZiwiPeak) that are low in carbs that may be worth looking at.

I can't say that I've ever seen a human diabetic who doesn't eat only at specified meal times. Frankly, my kitty was well know for fast, early, and hard drops in her numbers. She got fed at pre-shot, +1, +2, and often at +3 to keep her numbers propped up during the early part of the cycle when her numbers were most vulnerable. How often you feed Iona is best based on how she likes to eat. There are two considerations. First, we do not recommend feeding two hours prior to shot time (unless her numbers are low). You do not want your pre-shot number influenced by food. Once you have data from curves, you'll have a better idea of where Iona's nadir (lowest number in the cycle) falls. Many cat's have a nadir that's around the middle of the cycle. Once past nadir, the insulin is beginning to wear off. As such, feeding after nadir can cause a rise in numbers. Obviously, all of this is contingent on what the numbers tell you. If your cat drops into a lower range, you will need to feed her to bring her numbers into a safer range.

Lysine also comes in powder form. The down side is that you could mix it into Iona's food if she were eating canned food.