Newbie just asking for some dosage advice

[Cathy S]

Hello friends,
My 12 year old female stray Lotus had pancreatitis last week and spent four days in the hospital. She now has diabetes and was sent home with Lantus one unit every 12 hours. Also to do home testing. I got the strips, glucose monitor,needles etc. I haven't got the
ketone strips yet because I never heard of them until this morning. Lotus's numbers are all over the map. I think her spread sheet
which Sue kindly created for me this afternoon will be attached to this email. She suggested I post here for advise. My vet has not been terrifically helpful and I don't know whether she doesn't know/hasn't the experience or what. I have learned more in the past
24 hours from this site than I have in a whole week of conversations with the vet. I will post this and see if the sheet is attached.

 

[Blue]

Hello friends,
My 12 year old female stray Lotus had pancreatitis last week and spent four days in the hospital. She now has diabetes and was sent home with Lantus one unit every 12 hours. Also to do home testing. I got the strips, glucose monitor,needles etc. I haven't got the
ketone strips yet because I never heard of them until this morning. Lotus's numbers are all over the map. I think her spread sheet
which Sue kindly created for me this afternoon will be attached to this email. She suggested I post here for advise. My vet has not been terrifically helpful and I don't know whether she doesn't know/hasn't the experience or what. I have learned more in the past
24 hours from this site than I have in a whole week of conversations with the vet. I will post this and see if the sheet is attached.

Hi Cathy,
Your vet may well not know much about diabetes, but the people here can help you with whatever you need to know.
For the pancreatitis, what did your vet say about it? Pancreatitis is quite painful and usually needs pain meds as well as fluids given and something for nausea. It Lotus eating OK now? Did your vet give you the number from the test results for pancreatitis?

I imagine that Sue's already mentioned to you about diet, feeding only low carb wet food, and you are already home testing, so I guess just ask whatever questions you have now that you have saturated your brain with lots of reading on this site.

You are using a good insulin, so your vet can't be all that bad! So long as your vet will work with you, and is good at other health issues, you can just share what you learn here with your vet.

ETA: Just curious, how did your vet diagnose the diabetes? I would hope the vet did a fructosamine test which is a pretty good indicator as it's the average of your cat's BG over the last few weeks. I am asking because the numbers on your ss look like Lotus is needing very little insulin, if any at all.

Quite often, you will see high BG from pancreatitis, then once it settles, the numbers come down.
I would say to stick with the .5u dose for now and give Lotus' numbers a chance to settle.