- I've been lurking a lot here and am so grateful you exist since I feel we are rather on our own in figuring out how to best deal with all this (we have gotten some pretty dodgy advice from the vet who up to this point I felt was excellent). Our 15-year-old cat Nippers went from "boring" numbers at his last appointment -- great news since he is managing several conditions -- to a month later losing his appetite and ultimately getting the diabetes diagnosis. We've had a very dramatic few weeks due in some part to terrible advice (like telling us to take him home after his blood sugar got too low with the instructions to give no insulin for 5 days). He ended up in the hospital for 3 days (in sad shape, and with DKA) and I feel lucky he survived. I now feel really stupid for following instructions that ridiculous but we're such newbies I hadn't yet realized to what extent vet advice on diabetes can be seriously off the mark. They also told us taking our own readings was optional but I realize from reading here that was also bad advice. We've just started taking readings using an Alphatrak 2 and so far just have two (both taken 1 hour after a meal, approximately 12 hours after insulin). First was 130 and second was 134. It's been too crazy to do a chart but we will get to that. He is on 1/2 unit of lantus, one shot a day (in the morning).
The big problem now is that he'll eat well (or at least well given the new diagnosis) for a couple days and then get dehydrated and lose his appetite and stop pooping. He has always had a constipation issue and was on miralax and cisapride but we've never had the dehydration issue. (The vet replaced the miralax with lactulose for the time being.) Once he gets fluid therapy he feels much better, starts eating and pooping again, but then two days later he's dehydrated again. My theories are that he's just not eating nearly as much as he used to (he was a big eater, and a healthy, not overweight, almost-12 pounds...now he's down to 8.4 pounds and eats about 1/3 as much as he used to). Is he simply getting too little water because of this dramatic decrease in food intake? Or should we be giving a smaller dose of lantus every 12 hours? Is there a problem with only getting it once a day?
Other than those theories I'm at a loss as to why he so quickly gets dehydrated. He drinks water willingly and we only give him wet food (mostly Fancy Feast beef, beef/chicken classic pate, Tiny Tiger beef/turkey pate, with other various wet foods and salmon/chicken fillet treats when we're desperate for him to eat...we have three cats and a wide variety of foods). We syringe feed if necessary to keep up the insulin. We're taking him in for fluid therapy later today because after having a good appetite post fluids yesterday he's back to no appetite.
Nippers' other health issues besides constipation include intestinal lymphoma (two years in remission, on prednisolone...probably cause of diabetes...and Leukeran) but the vet has taken him off the Leukeran for now. He also has a heart condition which was controlled with a tiny amount of a diuretic and anti-clot med. The vet took him off the diuretic temporarily due to dehydration and has been carefully monitoring fluid in the lungs (there is none).
Sorry for such a long post but wanted to include all info that might help and Nippers is "complicated." Thank you!!
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