New Member - Valentin & Diabetic Blue

[diabetic_blue]

Now that we've cheated a bit, and our first post was in the calendar submissions thread, Blue asked me to open an introduction thread to present ourselves and our story, so here we go!

Born on June 2014, he joined us on September, same year. I was doing a lot of traveling for work back then, and my girlfriend at the time did not want to be alone while I was away. So during one of my travels she informed me we have a new family member, named Blue. He was a Persian cat that my girlfriend said was more of a petrol blue than grey, hence the name. It was love at first sight, and the little bastard has been part of our small family of 3 ever since.

He was always very independent, sleeping and grooming himself wherever he wanted, always refusing to be combed, and the only way to clean/comb his fur was to take it off completely every 4-5 months at a saloon.

His diabetic journey began end of March this year when, after a weekend alone (we'd always been able to leave him alone for for 1-2 nights every few weeks so we could visit parents) we found him with no water and a full litter box. No known health issues until then.

After a couple of days of constant drinking and peeing it was time for a vet visit, where he was diagnosed with diabetes (400 BG after 12 hours no food).

As we later found out, our vet wasn't experienced at all with FD (he'd only treated one cat before that, he said, died because had other issues) so he only prescribed that we switched from our Royal Canin Persian dry food to Virbac Weight Loss & Diabetes dry food for 3!!! months, after which we'd had to come back to redo the blood work. No other advice. Unfortunately we followed his advice and 3 months later, 2 Kg down (6,4 to 4,4) and weakness in the hind legs, the second blood test showed the same 400+ BG (and some other values slightly out of range). We were given a vial of Caninsulin and sent on our way home with indications to shoot 1UI twice a day, 12 hours apart, for a month, with not so much information. At the time I had already started testing on my own, though I had not yet found the board. One month later and not much progress, I asked to increase the dose to 2UI and then 3UI. It is about here where I found the board, and decided to go to a different vet/clinic.

The new vet was a completely different story, and while our first visit/conversation lasted for 10 or 15 minutes, it was like I was talking with a member of the board, confirming everything I was reading for the past few days and the mistakes we did. She immediately prescribed us Lantus, gave us detailed instructions, and did some more tests (where we also found chronic pancreatitis).
So now we're testing different doses, and we finally got our first yellows and one blue (no pun intended) after so many blacks but then jumped back to more reds and black (maybe our first bounce, after months and months of high BG or just me being a bit to eager with increasing the dose).

We're also trying different wet foods during the day (I started logging these to the SS as well - some days we're very hungry) and some dry food during the night (not sure yet how to handle this - if I leave any wet food he will inhale it instantly) and since I'm indulging all his requests for food, we're maybe up in weight just a tiny bit.

So there we have it, that's our story so far, and another pic of Blue that'll shortly get submitted to the calendar thread.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

Welcome to FDMB!

I wish I could say your first vet was an outlier but there are many vets who have limited experience with feline diabetes and apparently see no need to do any continuing education on the topic. OTOH, it's always good to hear that there are knowledgeable professionals in the community and we're on the same page.

My first question is what are you now feeding Blue? As I'm sure you've seen if you've been reading here, we encourage a low carbohydrate, canned or raw food diet. We consider low carb as 10% or less. However, most of the members here feed their cat a diet that's around 5% (give or take) carb. There are only a very few dry foods that fall into the low carb category. Also, dry food is not particularly great for cats. They have a limited thirst drive and dry foods, are, well.... dry. Aside from a limited thirst drive, diabetes is hard on the kidneys. Kidney disease is a common problem as cats age. Water is a good way to stave off all sorts of problems so I'd consider getting rid of the kibble. A timed feeder can be very helpful if you want to make sure that Blue has food accessible overnight. If you have not found the information on food charts, the one I linked has information on carbs. One thought -- are you in the US? The food chart I linked has mostly foods that are available in the US.

I'd delighted that your new vet switched Blue to Lantus. It is one of the insulins recommended by the American Animal Hospital Association. This is the link to our Lantus forum. There is an overwhelming amount of information in the sticky notes at the top of the page. There are posts about how Lantus works although I suspect that you will find the information on dosing methods most helpful.

Please let us know how we can help. The members here are very generous with their time and knowledge and we love questions!

 

[diabetic_blue]

Welcome to FDMB!

I wish I could say your first vet was an outlier but there are many vets who have limited experience with feline diabetes and apparently see no need to do any continuing education on the topic. OTOH, it's always good to hear that there are knowledgeable professionals in the community and we're on the same page.

My first question is what are you now feeding Blue? As I'm sure you've seen if you've been reading here, we encourage a low carbohydrate, canned or raw food diet. We consider low carb as 10% or less. However, most of the members here feed their cat a diet that's around 5% (give or take) carb. There are only a very few dry foods that fall into the low carb category. Also, dry food is not particularly great for cats. They have a limited thirst drive and dry foods, are, well.... dry. Aside from a limited thirst drive, diabetes is hard on the kidneys. Kidney disease is a common problem as cats age. Water is a good way to stave off all sorts of problems so I'd consider getting rid of the kibble. A timed feeder can be very helpful if you want to make sure that Blue has food accessible overnight. If you have not found the information on food charts, the one I linked has information on carbs. One thought -- are you in the US? The food chart I linked has mostly foods that are available in the US.

I'd delighted that your new vet switched Blue to Lantus. It is one of the insulins recommended by the American Animal Hospital Association. This is the link to our Lantus forum. There is an overwhelming amount of information in the sticky notes at the top of the page. There are posts about how Lantus works although I suspect that you will find the information on dosing methods most helpful.

Please let us know how we can help. The members here are very generous with their time and knowledge and we love questions!

Thank you for the kind welcome!

He's been on (mostly) wet food for the past 5 days, though I might have made a mistake here both increasing his dose and switching him to mostly wet around the same time. I'll probably decrease the dose today, since the BG's are worse in the past days with a higher dose and wet food mostly compared to before.

He's been ravaging whatever wet food I've been throwing at him (with up to almost 400g on some days) but I don't mind it, I think some weight gain won't be bad at this point since he's so skinny compared to how he used to be. He used to hate wet food before (tried it numerous times, both pates and chunks) but now he's hungry all the time.
I do let him have about 25g of his previous dry food (Virbac for diabetes) during the night for now, I've found information that a cold turkey change from dry to wet might not be great for his stomach.

I'm in Europe (Romania) and already found the UK food info, today I've already received the first batch of food from ZooPlus (like UK, I can also order from there).

I've been going through the threads for a few weeks now - first the Caninsulin one, now the Lantus one - more so since we switched to Lantus, but still so much to absorb while still dealing with everything else.

 

[Sienne and Gabby (GA)]

We make dose adjustment in 0.25u increments. There are no syringes that are calibrated in that amount -- you have to estimate. If you increase by too much, you risk passing what could be a good dose for your cat.

It would be helpful if you could add that you're in Romania in your signature. We tend to make the incorrect assumption that you're in the US if there's nothing in your signature that tells us otherwise.

Also, as far as the dry food goes, there is nothing in it that is appropriate for diabetes. The Virbac is about 26% carbs -- that's very high carb. It's second largest ingredient, lignocellulose, is most commonly used in biofuels. I'd give some thought to not feeding Blue this product. Like I said, there's nothing in it that is diabetes friendly.

 

[CORKY]

Welcome Blue to FDMB, you have done a great job changing vets, you are home testing which is great and we have the spreadsheet, this is going to be a great tool for Sienne or any member that can assist you getting blue to the right Lantus dose, and yes, it is overwhelming at first, but that firm important steps you have taken them already, now is just a matter of stabilizing Blu's BG numbers. Do your best to stay away from the kibbles they contain a very high content of carbs anywhere between 20-30%, this does not help his pancreas and you will continue to see these high BGs, if he loves the wet, keep feeding that, so when you get to the right dose for Blue, the kibbles will not interfere, and we are here for you 24/7 so ask away with any doubt or concern you may have, this is the right place to be, this Forum saves lives, including my Corky's