Pigpen has been OTJ for a week, since her last dose of .10 of a unit on 7/1 AM. She was almost entirely in greens and blues from 6/26 PM through 6/29, and has been in greens and low- to mid-blues since 6/30 (as far as I can tell -- see below). Her BG reading at the vet on Tues. was 113. I had a new FreeStyle Libre sensor installed on her at the time. Our veterinarian said to bring her back in two weeks for a recheck. I'm monitoring her in the meantime.
I noticed within a day that the FreeStyle is showing a wider range of readings than I expected -- as high as the upper 140s (when she's up and around and after she's eaten) and as low as below 40 (during a long nap). (The FreeStyle can't actually read under 40, so it just says "LO" on anything below that number.)
The first under-40 reading came Tues. night and came back into the 40s after about fifteen minutes. I disregarded it the first time as FreeStyle sensor first-day wonkiness. But it happened again Wed. night for a longer duration, at least thirty minutes.
What's kept me from panicking about this so far is (1) she's OTJ, (2) she's shown no hypo symptoms that I can tell, (3) her numbers bounce back into high double-digits soon after she wakes up, and (4) her appetite is fine and she's eliminating normally.
But I'm wondering if I should be concerned. It just seems strange that her numbers crash so far and so fast when she lies down to sleep -- from 134 to 30s in a little more than an hour, when it happened Tues. night. And it seems odd that she shoots back up sometimes into the 130s and 140s when she's up and around, even when she's not doing all that much. Is there any kind of disorder that would cause fluctuations on this scale, and would an additional vet check be in order?
Or, could it all be a FreeStyle thing? (This is the regular Libre model, not the Libre2.) I would love to check these numbers against an ear-stick or two, but she just will not let me do that. The only blood I've been able to get is my own.
As luck would have it, on 6/28 she started fussing with having the sensor on her and pulled it off, after tolerating sensors well for several weeks. Its replacement only lasted two days, and I couldn't get a new one successfully installed until 7/6. So I was without readings for a few days of this time.
(Thus, I don't have some of the current spreadsheet info available -- because of the trouble maintaining sensors on her there are large gaps in my info that I need to sort out.)
But what I do know has got me wondering just how much variance there is in normal BG ranges in cats. Any advice would be welcome.
I noticed within a day that the FreeStyle is showing a wider range of readings than I expected -- as high as the upper 140s (when she's up and around and after she's eaten) and as low as below 40 (during a long nap). (The FreeStyle can't actually read under 40, so it just says "LO" on anything below that number.)
The first under-40 reading came Tues. night and came back into the 40s after about fifteen minutes. I disregarded it the first time as FreeStyle sensor first-day wonkiness. But it happened again Wed. night for a longer duration, at least thirty minutes.
What's kept me from panicking about this so far is (1) she's OTJ, (2) she's shown no hypo symptoms that I can tell, (3) her numbers bounce back into high double-digits soon after she wakes up, and (4) her appetite is fine and she's eliminating normally.
But I'm wondering if I should be concerned. It just seems strange that her numbers crash so far and so fast when she lies down to sleep -- from 134 to 30s in a little more than an hour, when it happened Tues. night. And it seems odd that she shoots back up sometimes into the 130s and 140s when she's up and around, even when she's not doing all that much. Is there any kind of disorder that would cause fluctuations on this scale, and would an additional vet check be in order?
Or, could it all be a FreeStyle thing? (This is the regular Libre model, not the Libre2.) I would love to check these numbers against an ear-stick or two, but she just will not let me do that. The only blood I've been able to get is my own.
As luck would have it, on 6/28 she started fussing with having the sensor on her and pulled it off, after tolerating sensors well for several weeks. Its replacement only lasted two days, and I couldn't get a new one successfully installed until 7/6. So I was without readings for a few days of this time.
(Thus, I don't have some of the current spreadsheet info available -- because of the trouble maintaining sensors on her there are large gaps in my info that I need to sort out.)
But what I do know has got me wondering just how much variance there is in normal BG ranges in cats. Any advice would be welcome.
