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LoriD

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Hey... I'm Tiny, also known as the OC Kitty, and this is my Mom Lori. She's the one doing the typing, I'm the one sitting on the keyboard making sure she gets everything right. So about two years ago, my former family left me in an outside kennel in the middle of the night at the shelter. It's was a pretty lousy situation with a great outcome. I think they didn't want to take care of me, because I was a diabetic and pretty sick. My back legs no longer worked and I had lost a lot of fur. When my mom adopted me, my blood sugar was 492 and I weighed 31 pounds. I'm kind of the linebacker of the kitty world. After my doctor started me on insulin (human-N) my sugars went down and I dropped a lot of weight. I managed to get down to 21 lbs. Fast forward a year. This summer my human parents moved my sister and I to a new home in Southern CA and I became the OC kitty. My mom's been on this kick lately about getting the whole family healthy and unfortunately my sister and I have not escaped her notice. She wants to make changes to my food and even my insulin as she's been reading that there are better versions for kitties my size. She even bought one of those blood testing kits, but has not used it yet. Seriously, I keep telling her she already pokes me enough. Although, I suspect I may not be able to escape her too much longer.
She also said I need to find a new vet in Southern CA. So, here we are. Mom's trying to find support for learning how to test my sugars, what diet I need, and tips for making me the lean mean kitty machine. And, we are both trying to find a new "good" vet in the south Orange County, north San Diego county area that doesn't charge the equivalent of 6 months worth of my kibble. If you have any suggestions, please let us know.
 
Welcome to fdmb Tiny and Lori,

This is the right spot for you. This board full of wonderful people and great information helped me (Samantha) get my Hidey off insulin. He is now diet controlled. First thing is the insulin, you are right on the right path to find something different. Sometimes that type can help but it is a short acting insulin and if you've given it a while it's not the right insulin for you, we recommend lantus, levemir, prozinc or pzi. I had Hidey on prozinc, everyone prefers something different but I did my research and it seemed to be the one I wanted him on.

Home testing! Yes! Yes! Yes! So glad your willing to do it. It is intimating but it gets easier, make sure to have diabetic friendly treats most here use freeze dried chicken. I use halos freeze dried chicken and also boil chicken. Testing is recommended before each shot and it's also a good idea to get a test in as often as possible about 6 hours after insulin is given to see how it's working. There are tons of videos on how to test but a quick tip is to warm the ear with a rice sock, or something else warm, not hot to help get the blood flowing.

Diet......what are you currently feeding? We try to stick to 10% carbs or less. Hidey is carb sensitive so he can't have anything over 5%. Here is a link to the food list.....
http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf

Also if you get a chance there's good info on catinfo.org
 
Hi Lori and Tiny,

My name is Shelly, and my cat's name is Jersey. We're another success story of FDMB.

Just a brief overview of our story: Jersey was diagnosed in November 2013. The vet put her on Hill's w/d dry food, which he said might bring her back into remission. Three months later, her numbers hadn't come down, so he started her on Humulin-N. That's when I finally started doing my own research and realized that the food she was on was terrible, and the insulin she was on wasn't much better. The dry food was around 37% carbs, and the Humulin-N brought her down hard and fast, and then wore off quickly. We switched foods to low-carb canned food. Dr. Lisa Pierson has created a food chart that lists the carb amounts for a variety of foods. Here's a link to it: http://www.catinfo.org/docs/FoodChartPublic9-22-12.pdf. We recommend feeding foods that contain no more than 10% carbs (the third column on the chart). I think most of us here feed foods that are around 5% carbs.

Lantus, Levemir, and Prozinc are some of the best insulin for cats. They are longer lasting than Humulin and don't have those sharp drops that Humulin does. We actually went to a second vet who prescribed Lantus for us. After two months on Lantus, Jersey went into remission. We followed what's called the "Tight Regulation (TR)" protocol.

Yes, yes, yes on the home testing! That's so important, even though it sounds scary in the beginning. There are actually lots of tips on testing here: http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=287. Most people here use ReliOn meters from Wal-Mart to test their kitties. The meters and test strips are relatively cheap compared to actual pet meters like the AlphaTrak. I'll be honest - I couldn't get the hang of ear testing. I tried and tried and couldn't do it. However, we were able to successfully paw test. Those numbers were vital to us; it let us know when Jersey was ready for a dose increase or decrease. Without testing, I may repeatedly given Jersey too much insulin (or not enough). We simply couldn't have gotten into remission without testing at home. Since our vets (both of them) were not very knowledgeable about feline diabetes (my second vet prescribed 10 units once a day), I ended up joining the Tight Regulation forum. I posted Jersey's numbers each day and let the very experienced users guide us in dosing. In fact, once we started posting here, I never took Jersey back to the vet (thus saving us a lot of money in the long run). Fortunately, Jersey didn't have any other health problems that would require a vet visit.

Okay, so I'll stop there and see if you have questions.

She's the one doing the typing, I'm the one sitting on the keyboard making sure she gets everything right.
Click to expand...

I do that, too, but Mom doesn't like my supervision. She says I'm bein' a pest. :roll: ~ Jersey
 
Thanks for the feedback! Well, we did it. We tested for the very first time tonight. And we actually got a good drop on the very first try. It's amazing how valuable a small pen light can be against the ear. Tiny fought me some but we managed to get a reading of 110. I suspect his low number is due to having switched his diet 3 days ago to a low carb food. In fact the day I switched him, I also reduced his insulin from 4 units to 3, after reading that the low carb would probably affect the amount he needed. About 3 hours after his morning dose today he started acting like his BG was way too low. I gave him a handful of high carb kibble and a couple of treats and within an hour or two he seemed normal. That's when I joined this forum and went out and bought a Relion meter at Walmart.
I am thinking, I will skip his insulin dose for now and recheck him in 4 hours. A vet I spoke with said he's should be fine as long as his BG is under 200. Any opinions on this? Is anyone aware of an optimal number for a very large (22lb) diabetic kitty?
 
Hi Tiny! I myself am new here and besides foreigner with broken English so I can't give you any advice. But reading Lori's post I just wanted to tell you how lucky you are to have your momma beside you. You both are at the right place where you will get lots of helpful info and I have no doubt you will soon be OK. We wish you all the best Tiny !
Misho and Di from Bulgaria
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A vet I spoke with said he's should be fine as long as his BG is under 200. Any opinions on this? Is anyone aware of an optimal number for a very large (22lb) diabetic kitty?
Click to expand...

Okay, there are a couple of different ways to look at this one. We consider normal numbers for a non-diabetic cat (or a diabetic cat in remission) to be between 50 and about 120. Some cats (like my Jersey) actually run even lower than that - like in the 30s and 40s. That's perfectly okay as long as they are not on insulin. If they're on insulin, we consider anything less than 50 potential hypo territory.

The renal threshold is thought to be somewhere between 200 to 250 - I've seen both of these numbers cited on FDMB. When numbers are above renal threshold, organ damage becomes much more likely. I'm guessing your vet picked the 200 because of this reason.

Just to verify - are you still using Humulin-N?

I would love to help you with the dosing for it, but I just don't have enough experience with it. I only hesitantly used it in the beginning and wouldn't give Jersey a shot if I couldn't be home to monitor her. That meant we had a lot of missed shots. Even just a fraction of a unit took her numbers way down, and I was terrified she would crash if I couldn't monitor.

There are a few individuals here who have experience with Humulin-N, and they might be able to help you more with dosing. You might want to edit the subject line of the very first post in this thread to say something like, "New - Need help with Humulin dosing." (If you don't change your subject line in your very first post in the thread, people won't be able to see it from the main page.) Changing your subject line to something like this may help draw attention to your specific questions about Humulin.

Great job getting your very first test in!
Shelly
 
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