Please, I need help with my diabetic cat Jada

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Tiff Millenbine

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Jada is my 17 lb. 13 year old diabetic cat. She was diagnosed in February of 2010. It has been a roller coaster of ups and downs. Jada is on Lantus and receives 6 units once a day at around 4. I work 6a to 3 so I have been able to keep her on a pretty regular dosing schedule. I have not been home monitoring her and I regret this now because from what I have read it is the right thing to do. Lately Jada has been having seizures at what I guess to be the peak time of the insulin. Unfortunately it is also around the time I have to go to work. The best I can do is get her sugar up, monitor her for a time and then I have to leave and go to work miserable. I have been feeding Jada dry food all her life because I thought it was best and the vets recommended it. Now I have also learned that this is no good either. I feel bad because I have been a misinformed pet parent. I want to switch Jada to wet cat food and start home montitoring. Some questions though: when do I take samples to monitor? How do I know how much insulin to give? Should I be giving Lantus injections twice daily and if I do should they be 6 units? Is it okay to switch her to wet food when she had had dry food all her life? Is the insulin doing this to her? Am I giving her to much? Her vet took some blood at her last appt. And her BG for the previous two weeks was 310. He told me to keep on doing what I was doing even with the seizures. I am so stressed and at a loss that I can't get her regulated. I live by myself so there is no one here to help me or be a support. Please, I need some advice.
 
Big breaths, Tiff. Lots of us fed dry food, had no idea how much or how often to give insulin. The important thing is that you are educating yourself and figuring out the best way to help Jade.

6 units is a lot of insulin and the dry food is probably helping to keep her from going too low. So we need to do this slowly and carefully. First up, learn to test at home. Then you can make other changes in a careful way, being sure her blood glucose numbers stay in a safe range. We have taught hundreds of people how to test over the internet. Here is a good beginning site: Newbie hometesting site and a Video for hometesting Here is a list of things you need:


A human glucometer. Any one that sips and takes a tiny sample is fine. The meters are often free at drug stores; it’s the strips that are expensive. You can, however, buy them on ebay at less than half the price of stores. Lots of people here also like the ReliOn from Walmart. It is an inexpensive meter and its strips are the cheapest around.

Lancets and a lancet device. Usually, until the ears “learn” to bleed, a 25-26 gauge is good. Any brand will work.

Ketone strips. (Ketostix) Just like human diabetics use. You will sometimes need to test urine if the numbers are high.

Rice sack. Make this out of thinnish sock, filled with raw rice or oatmeal and then knotted. You heat this in the microwave until very warm but not hot. Then heat the ears before poking.

Also nice to have. Flashlight: so you can look at the ears and find the little capillaries that come off the vein running down the ear. Vaseline: Put a tiny smear where you want to poke. It will help the blood bead up.

And some lo carb treats to give your kitty, successful test or not Lo carb treats

Once you get a handle on the numbers, you can safely start changing to wet lo carb food.

Tests taken at the vet usually means higher blood glucose levels than you would get at home, because stress raises levels and very few cats are not stressed at the vet. Tests taken at home are much more accurate.

Insulin rarely lasts more than 12 hours in cats. So once a day dosing is not very logical. She needs 2 shots a day, 12 hours apart. But I am worried about suddenly changing the dose without knowing what is happening.

Can you get you hometesting tonight?
 
Welcome Tiff and Jada to the best place you never wanted to be, but glad you found us.

First off Lantus is an excellent insulin for kitties, but it needs to be given twice a day on a 12-12 schedule. And 6 units is way to high for a newly dxed kitty unless she has some kind of underlying health problems that makes her a high dose kitty.

Home testing it absolutely the best thing you can do for Jada to keep her safe and to stop those seizures. More than likely she is having them because she is getting way to much insulin and her blood sugar is dropping too low.

So first off if you can I would get to a local drugstore and get just a regular human meter. I personally use the Relion Mini from Wal-mart. I think the whole set up, meter, test strips and lancets ran me about $35. Or you can get a free newbie kit from Lori and Tom off this board, that would include everything to get you started.

I would not change her diet until you get a meter and get home testing down, because just taking her off the dry food may lower her BGs as much as 100pts. But even before changing her diet, if this was my kitty I would drop her back to no more than 1u twice a day 12 hours apart and get a meter so you can see exactly where she is at blood sugar wise. We can teach you how to do it, we have taught plenty of folks over the internet. It is very easy to do, we just poke the edge of their ears, it doesn't hurt them at all. And so much safer than shooting insulin blind.

As far as food goes, no it would not hurt her at all to switch her over to all cannned food even if she has grown up eating dry. We have lots of tips for switching a kitty over. I personally have 10 cats (only 1 a diabetic) that I have switched over, and I can't even begin to tell you how much better even my non-diabetics are doing on the change in diet, let alone that my diabetic is now diet controlled and off insulin all together.

I'm sure others will be along shortly with a ton of links for you.

Mel, Max & The Fur Gang
 
Thank you for the assistance I got. I REALLY appreciate it. Right now I feel so overwhelmed like I said but now I have focus. I will be getting all the home testing supplies tomorrow. But the thing is I have a dentist appointment and might not be home until around 5. I was wondering should I change Jadas dosing to around 5am so I can effectively test her and administer two shots, one before I go to work and one when I get home at around 5 pm and have been around Jada for awhile??? I didn't realize I was giving such a big dose and that I was supposed to give Lantus twice a day. I hope that I will be successful at this and regulate Jada because I have had her ever since she was a kitten and she is my heart---we have been through a lot together.
 
If possible, it would probably be better to give yourself some leeway. Maybe 5 % of us got blood on the first try. We spent an entire weekend poking poor Oliver before we got a drop.

Not to worry. We all have tricks that helped us that we love to share.

How about reading all the info tonight and watching the video. Get the stuff tomorrow and try it when you get home. Come on and tell us how it worked.
 
Tiff,

It's okay we all have been right where you are now when we first stumbled onto this board, scared out of our minds, and completely overwhelmed with the news that our precious baby had diabetes. I know when I first got here way back in May of this year ( and it now seems like decades ago) with my first sugarcat Muse I was crying so hard I could barely type.

Unfortunately by the time I got here it was too late for my Muse she had so many other things wrong with her. But it was through the support of this board that back in October I adopted my current sugarcat Max. If this wasn't such and easy disease to manage and if I hadn't had this great resource I would have never set myself up to take on another cat with diabetes. But I'm so glad I did. Because of these great people I have a lovely new boy in my life.

Go easy on yourself, as Sue has said very few of us get the home testing right on the first couple of tries but it does get easier as you go along. Now I could probably do it in my sleep. The very first time I tested Max he had only been in my home for less than 8 hours, if I can do it on a cat that had absolutely no reason to trust this crazy lady that he had just met jabbing him in the ear with a lancet. Just imagine how much easier of a time you will have with Jada who has known you since she was just a tiny little baby?

A couple of things that I found really helped me with Max was warming up his ear first, you can either use a rice sock, (a thinnish cotton sock, filled with plain white rice about 2/3 full) that you microwave for a few seconds, or even just giving them a good vigorous rubbing. The other was using a little bit of neosporine to help the blood bead up and not disappear into his fur.

Just remember to breathe, and we will be here to help hold your hand/paw through it all.

Mel, Max & The Fur Gang
 
Hi Tiff -

Everyone's given you good advice so far, so I'm not going to repeat it all. Other than the part about taking a deep breath (or two or three)... You're on the right track and you'll find lots of help and support here.

But there's one thing nobody has really stressed, that's a very critical. If Jada has been having seizures - then she is getting too much insulin!! Please, please, please do not give her 6 units again!!

Also, just to be sure it's covered, in almost all cats insulin does work best given twice a day. But you won't just be adding a 2nd shot (thus doubling her dose). You will be giving a smaller dose twice a day. For example, instead of the 6 units once a day she's getting now, you would split that dose (at least) in half and give 3 units twice a day.

I'm not a dosing expert, but if it was me... With Jada's history of seizures I would probably drop all the way back to the usual starting dose of 1 unit twice a day and start over. That is a very big drop in the dosage though, so you might be more comfortable dropping to a dose of 2 units twice a day to start.

Once you get the hang of testing and get some data to see how she's doing, then you can start to change her diet and adjust her dose as needed. Some cats' BG can drop 100 points (or more) just from stopping dry food. Since Jada's getting too much insulin now, that dry food is helping protect her. So you don't want to take it away until her dose is lowered and you are monitoring her BG.

Hang in there!
 
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