You’re welcome.
Well....we’ve all overreacted to the numbers at least one time but likely, lots more so no worries

I do remember one member who gave her cat something like 2
tbsp of honey

The goal is to learn how to feed with low carb (LC) so that the numbers come down gradually instead of the bottom dropping out fast. It’s going to happen that he’ll go below 50 at some time and that’s fine. We aren’t trying to feed to keep him from earning reductions but just trying to flatten the curve a bit as we see it dropping. As you deal with lower numbers, you’ll find out how carb sensitive he might be and it will be different during different parts of the cycle.
For example, after he onsets, you will likely need more carbs or more food for lower numbers than you will at the end of the cycle when the insulin is waning. Yes, if he drops below 50, try his regular food first and give him a couple of good tsp of it. Retest in 20-30 minutes (it usually takes 30 minutes from when they eat it for the first effects of the food on the BG to show). Obviously, if he gives you a really low number in the 40s or 30s, you’ll want to give honey or syrup and retest in 15 minutes as they will bring the BG up much faster than food and we want them up fast if they are really low.
Does that help?
Here is a post on
How to Handle Low Numbers but remember that every cat is different. I found that high carb (HC) food did not work for Gracie....it stopped her duration cold so I had to stick with foods no more than 13% (usually 10%) and if she dropped lower than 40, I used a drop of karo.
I’d like to toss out some info to you about Levemir and what those cycles look like.
Typically, onset is about +4 and nadir is anywhere from +8 to +12 or even after if the dose is good. Levemir can give some great duration. What you might expect to see, then, is a lower preshot number and then numbers climb until +3 or +4. Onset occurs and numbers come down to nadir. Of course, all of this is assuming it’s not a bounce clearing cycle (today is not).
The wonderful thing about levemir that I always loved when I was using it was that I could shoot those lower numbers knowing that I had time to feed and see the BG rise before onset. With Lantus, my Gracie would give me a low number at preshot and then it was a scramble to get enough food into her before she onset at +2. It’s one of the reasons I switched to levemir.
I only see one cycle with a blue or green PS where Taco came down by +2 so, if it were me, because he was flat going into preshot, I’d likely not test again until at least +2.
You’ll want to study his spreadsheet and see if you can identify these really important times of his cycle because it will help you know when to test. Normally, I have to ask members to test more but I don’t see a reason to test him hourly when he’s in pinks and yellows and, depending on how fast he’s dropping, there might be cycles of blue where you can spread it out a little more.
- Onset - the length of time before insulin reaches the bloodstream & begins lowering blood glucose
- Peak/Nadir - the lowest point in the cycle
- Duration - the length of time insulin continues to lower blood glucose
Also, here is some information about M
aking the Most of your Lantus, Baslagar, Levemir ISG Experience which will tell you how we post each day. We do one thread (we call them “condos” per cat per day with
all of your questions in it). The subject each morning is started as (example based on today’s cycles):
9/23 Taco AMPS 140 +4 192 +5 184 +6 185 +7 147 +8 168 +9 130 +10 170 +11 171
Starting with PMPS, you would edit the title (go back to the first post of the day, click on “thread tools” on the right upper corner and “edit title”, delete everything after “AMPS” and start over with PMPS so it would look like:
9/23 Taco PMPS 161
Finally, if you’d like, I can add a column for you for what you feed after his shot because you might need the +1 column for numbers at some point.