Open Mouth Breathing got this as a PM from a member

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Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA)

Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA)

Member Since 2019
New to the forum here. My now 15 yr old cat was diagnosed with diabetes in February and it’s been a hell of a journey. We just can’t seem to regulate her, which has been causing nonstop health issues. Every day I wake up and wait to see what the day brings me. So we put on a Freestyle Libre sensor to hopefully get it under control. The first trip to the vet it was not put on correctly and we had to return in the same day. Finally got it hooked up correctly, but I expected her reading to be high due to the stress of 2 vet visits in 1 day. She started at 485, then started to slowly go down, and then it randomly went back to being high to the point where the app for the sensor just said “high out of range”. Within that time I noticed her breathing seemed slightly rapid. Finally gave her her evening dose and then also noticed she is currently breathing with her mouth slightly open and tongue kind of sticking out. She’s not panting just breathing with her mouth open. I’ll be calling her vet tomorrow,but has anyone else experienced this?
 
@s_corinne here’s your thread.

Minnie had some episodes of that and I had to rush her to the ER because she was having a cardiac arrest. The breathing with her mouth open is a concern because it can be an indication she’s not getting enough oxygen or she’s hyper ventilating. Can you please take her resting respiratory rate? Make sure she’s been asleep for at least 15 minutes then count her breaths for 15 seconds. Multiply the number you get by 4. It should not be more than 30. If she were my cat, I’d be taking her to the er if the open mouth breathing continues.

as far as the diabetes, what kind of food are you fedi her and what insulin is she on?
 
Ale & Bobo & Minnie (GA) said:
@s_corinne here’s your thread.

Minnie had some episodes of that and I had to rush her to the ER because she was having a cardiac arrest. The breathing with her mouth open is a concern because it can be an indication she’s not getting enough oxygen or she’s hyper ventilating. Can you please take her resting respiratory rate? Make sure she’s been asleep for at least 15 minutes then count her breaths for 15 seconds. Multiply the number you get by 4. It should not be more than 30. If she were my cat, I’d be taking her to the er if the open mouth breathing continues.

as far as the diabetes, what kind of food are you fedi her and what insulin is she on?
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Thanks for your reply! She is fine today. She is currently on Royal Canin Glucobalance dry food. Unfortunately I cannot get her to eat wet food and got concerned with her not eating enough and had to resort back to the dry food. She is currently taking 2.5 units of Lantus. I feel as though we might have to up her dose because she still keeps reading in the upper 400s.
 
Dry food is not ideal for diabetic cats and it’s hard to know if you need to up the dose without seeing any data for testing. What wet foods have you tried? You don’t need expensive prescription foods. Any low carb pates like fancy feast or Friskies are okay.

the good news is Lantus is a great insulin for cats. Would you be willing to home test?

With a diabetic cat you need:

  • A low carb wet diet that is 10% carbs or under. Most of us use around 4-7% carbs
  • A suitable insulin such as Lantus or Prozinc which are long acting, more gentle insulins than the old insulins.
  • We recommend hometesting the blood glucose with a human meter…it is not necessary to use a pet meter which is expensive to run and is no better. It will keep your kitty safe and you will know how the dose is working for your kitty. Only testing every so often will not tell you what is happening in between those times and an awful lot can happen in even a day.
  • HELP US HELP YOU has information about the spreadsheet, signature and hypo box which you will need to be able to look after your beloved kitty properly
A word of warning though…don’t change the food you are feeding at the moment over to the low carb food until you are testing the blood glucose because a change over can drop the BGs by up to 100 points and we don’t want you to have a hypo on your hands.

We are happy to help you with setting up the spreadsheet, sorting out what food to buy, how to transition safely to a low carb diet, how to learn to home test and much more!
 
I would definitely urge you to home test with a BGM because the FreeStyle Libre is incredibly inaccurate, and I have inadvertently hurt my cat by blindly going by the numbers the Libre has given me and adjusting his dose based on those.
I'm referring to the Libre reading anywhere between 5-14 mmol/L [90-250 mg/dl] higher than actual BG, so I'm not talking about negligible discrepancies here.
 
Oh geez really? I’ve tried testing her at home but it’s no easy task lol. It’s just me here so I have no one to help hold her and she is not so easy to do anything to unfortunately. She is still drinking excessively and peeing a lot so I’m sure her sugars are still very high. I will be talking to her vet tomorrow to see what she thinks we should do next. Luckily for me my vet also has had diabetic cats of her own so she’s been super helpful.
 
I’m very distrustful of vets when it comes to feline diabetes, but that’s been my personal experience.

would you be able transfer some of the data you collected onto one of our spreadsheet templates? We would be able to give you advice about the dosage then.
 
s_corinne said:
Oh geez really? I’ve tried testing her at home but it’s no easy task lol. It’s just me here so I have no one to help hold her and she is not so easy to do anything to unfortunately. She is still drinking excessively and peeing a lot so I’m sure her sugars are still very high. I will be talking to her vet tomorrow to see what she thinks we should do next. Luckily for me my vet also has had diabetic cats of her own so she’s been super helpful.
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Having her on a good insulin and having a supportive and knowledgeable vet, is half a battle, honestly! We've went through several vets until our current one - the only person that highly supports Lantus, home testing, micro dosing and let alone heard of the TR protocol, but even advocates for it!

So sorry, I didn't mean to scare you! I believe quite a few members have had good experiences with the Libre in the past, but I'm aware a lot who's been facing the same issue as we did and mentioned above, so I always feel obliged to at least flag it up to members. If I'm proven wrong, and it causes you no issues, that's even better! But I'd definitely cross-check her CGM numbers every here and there with a BGM.
There are stickies on the hows and whys with tricks and tips on mastering the ear pricks.
 
I’m not sure how to transfer the data onto a spreadsheet but so far the readings I have from the freestyle libre are:
8/15
1:30pm 485
2:30pm 473
4:30pm 456
6:30pm “high out of range”
8:30pm “high out of range”
10:30pm 474
11:30pm 462

8/16
3:00am 443
9:00am 498
12:00pm 437
2:00pm 428
4:30pm 399

currently I am at work and haven’t been able to check since I left my house. I would like to attempt to do the ear prick again just to see for myself, she’s just so difficult! Lol this is a cat who would freak out over me just putting flea treatment on her lol so we will see. I appreciate everyone’s feedback! I’m hoping to get this under control within the next 2 weeks before school starts.
 
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