? Pooey PM+2 336, +3 280, +4 280, +5 238, +6 189

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Poodoodle

Poodoodle

Member Since 2015
Moving my thread from the medical forum to the lantus/levemir forum. I'm new to feline diabetes treatment, and concerned that I've made poor choices in dosing. Please let me know if you have any guidance or feedback based on your knowledge and experiences.

My cat, Pooey, was diagnosed with diabetes March 23rd and set with a 2.0U dose that the vet increased to 3.0U the next week. She never told me about home testing or its importance so when I found out I kinda said heck with you I'm doing this on my own and started on this road below.

I haven't been very careful, disciplined or patient and I feel scared. I haven't held the doses for a full week, we are at 7.0U now. Seeing most references are for 1U or 2U I'm thinking I must be crazy. I swear I'll stop adjusting until I see a vet. They numbers don't look like they'll lead to hypoglycemia soon, but I'm so confused by my dosing versus what I seem to read everyone else is doing. Is this going to blow up at any moment? Or am I not too far gone yet?

April 9th 3.0U AM+4: 481, +5.5: 445, +7: 510, +8.5: 516, PMPS 534, +2: 441
April 12th 4.0U AM+4: 402, +8: 498, +10: 464
April 17th 5.0U AM+4: 297, +5: 354, +7: 432, +9: 498
April 19th 6.0U AM+4: 276, +9: 453
April 21st 6.0U AM+2: 360, +4: 330
April 21st 7.0U PM+2: 336, +3: 280, +4: 280, +5: 238, +6: 189
 
Hello and welcome. There is a wealth of information on this forum. Please read the yellow Sticky Notes and ask questions - we love to help here. One of the things that will really help us help you and Pooey is to create a spreadsheet of your blood glucose tests to date. Here are the instructions.

7.0U is a lot of insulin. It may or may not be too much. There are some conditions that mean kitties need higher doses. My kitty Neko has two high dose conditions, IAA and acromegaly. She got up to 8.75 units, but over a period of several months and increasing slowly to make sure we didn't go past the optimum dose. Too much insulin can also produce high numbers at first. You do not want to increase the insulin too fast and we increase in either .25U or .5U increments, depending on what our blood tests say.

We have two methods that we follow here for determining how to dose. They are the Tight Regulation (TR) Protocol or the Start Low Go Slow (SLGS) Method. They both have you hold the initial dose for a week, with tests to determine how low the dose is taking the cat. We determine the Lantus dose by looking at how low it takes the cat. TR increases faster than SLGS (3-5 days vs. 1 week) at each dose and increase are either .25U or .5U depending on nadirs (low points). Eating low carb wet food is a requirement for TR, so you'd be following the SLGS method, unless you switch to all wet. But please do not change the food unless you reduce the dose a lot. The starting dose on SLGS for a cat eating dry food is 1.0 unit, 0.5U for a cat eating wet food. The initial dose for TR is based on the cat's ideal weight, which usually works out to somewhere between 1 and 2 units.
 
Thanks for the information. I maintain a spreadsheet on my computer but will transition to the one in the instructions. I'm going to do another +7 test before sleep. No plans to change the diet, the timed feeder is the only thing that ensures I'll sleep until 5AM (yay!). She spent 8 years waking me up nearly every 2 hours before it.
 
+7 191 and now going to sleep. I hope it won't be an issue to go back to 6.0U tomorrow. My cat is the most pleasant agreeable being when letting me do the testing. I never would have expected her to be so peaceful during the process given how squirmy and nervous she's been in general in the past. So happy about this!
 
Yowsers that is some crazy dosing you've been doing, so glad you found us! Looking forward to seeing a spreadsheet so we can help you better. From the numbers you provided above it seems you may not be testing before every shot (perhaps I am wrong and you just provided a selection for us?) if you haven't been doing that please ensure that you do. Shooting blind is a good way to end up with a hypo.

A lot of people find that treating diabetes brings them closer to their cat - I'm glad it seems to be working that way for you :)
 
The biggest issue here is whether what you're feeding is keeping your cat's numbers high. It may also be providing you with some safety with regard to your dosing. I suspect the dry food is keeping numbers up. Many of us use timed feeders. It is fine to put canned food into a timed feeder. I work so I'm not home during the day and it's a means of insuring there's food for my kitty if her numbers should drop. Most of us feed a low carb (i.e., under 10% carb), canned food diet. If you want to read more about feline nutrition, the link I provided is an excellent source of information.
 
@Viktor's Mum - Spreadsheet is up. I feel so guilty for the choices I've made in uping doses and not measuring glucose more often. I didn't have a frame of reference before finding this site and given my vet had expected me to dose without checking levels I didn't consider its importance (the vet did not, however, expect me to change the dose from the original 3 units).

@Sienne and Gabby - It might be, but I've switched from generic dry food to lower carb lower glycemic index dry foods and really see no difference from when she was originally diagnosed. The wet foods I've been feeding her for the past month have no fiber. I've been feeding her more of the canned and frozen foods (Rad Cat) and cut the auto dry feed amounts. I would have expected it to have some impact on numbers, but don't really see that.
 
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