New poster wanting to say thank you

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Melanie and Smokey

Melanie and Smokey

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Smokey was diagnosed around Christmas time with diabetes reading over 400. With 3 cats it took us a while to recognize the symptoms and who they were coming from. When she started to drop weight drastically we took her in and thankfully we have a vet that is pretty good with diabetic cats, but she doesn't seem to encourage home monitoring nor do I feel we get enough information to monitor things at home.

A member on another site saw me mention the diabetes diagnosis and recommended this site and I have been reading since. Thank you so much for sharing all of you information. Our main vet and the other one that we see occassionally differ on a few issues and it has helped to have such a depth of experience here. My biggest hurdle was taking away her dry food, she LOVES to snack and the vets didn't seem to think we needed to take it away. When I saw SD Hairball Light was so high in the carbs on here, out it went! We feed Purina DM soft 2 times a day and we do keep some hard Purina DM out during the day because we are gone and I am quite terrified of an episode of insulin shock while we are gone.

We started Lantis at 1 unit and have worked up to 3. I started home testing after seeing so many people doing it here. Smokey seemed to be pretty low at the vets all the time and I wanted to get an idea of what her range was. I haven't gotten a reading higher than 85 and today (3 hours after food, 2.5 after shot) she tested at 52. If I hadn't been testing her I would have just went to work and left her alone. She's not showing signs of anything wrong, but I was able to get her to eat a little more and after a call to the vet I will stay home to monitor her and we may skip tonite's insulin.

Thank you for giving me the information I need and the courage to get more active in my girl's care.
 
LANTUS Newbie - 3u BID @ 52 +2.5

congrats for learning to home test

please read the sticky posts in the LANTUS

Since you changed the food, you will probably need to reduce the dose.
 
Ok, so to confirm, she got 3 units today and has been testing at 87 and 52? Are you posting in the lantus forum as well? They'll likely suggest a reduction to 1 unit max and testing both prior to shot and midway to determine how the insulin is working. I'm so glad that you decided to test!!!

Jen
 
Thank you.

Yes, she received 3 units at 9am, testing at 85 at 8:30 and then 52 at 11:30 with food between the first test and the shot. Fed her more at that point. Retest at 3:00 shows her back up to 70.

Vet recommended dropping her to 2 units for evening shot unless she is still below 100 then we should skip the 9pm shot. She hasn't been near 100 on any home test I have given her.

I haven't posted in the Lantus for yet, but was doing some reading and am not as freaked seeing that the target range to hold then in is 50-80 on Lantus. I had not seen that the range was different on the human meter by that much and was just hearing that under 60 was getting in the danger zone.

I will go post in the Lantus forum and see what the opinions are on tonite's shot - give 2, less, or not at all.
 
I totally understand the lack of food fear and here is something you can do to 100% remove the dry and feel safe that there is plenty of wet available.

Freeze the food. It's very simple - take the wet food and add water, mix, and freeze - you can use ziplocs, ice cube trays or plastic containers. I like the ziplocs - once frozen empty out and place for eating/thawing.

It takes a couple hours to thaw and it's as good as fresh.

This allows you to freely free feed and make sure there is plenty of food available when you're gone for several hours at a time.

I free feed my girls and while I haven't frozen recently, I do do that and it works great.
 
The target range may be 85-50 but that is when you know how your cat responds to a given dose. Given that you have only just started, it is trickier to know what your cutoff should be. Typically we suggest 200 as a cutoff but the others may suggest something a bit lower. Depends on your ability to monitor, etc.

Jen
 
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