ProZinc-Taking Things Slow And Results So Far

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AshleyDiamond

AshleyDiamond

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AshleyDiamond
Hello everyone! This is my first post on the message board. So a little background info. Our Tootsie is a male polydactyl tabby and is 11 years old. We also just recently lost our 11 year old Chihuahua to Lymphoma Cancer. It wasn't even 2 months after losing him that Tootsie was diagnosed with Diabetes. Our initial symptoms was excessive water intake and lots of pee. We had a full work up done on him and he was diagnosed on 5/5/18, We started him on Novalin N, 2 units twice a day. He had a past history with urinary issues, he never ended up fully blocked but did need to stay in the hospital for a week with a catheter. That's when his diet was changed to Hills Prescription C/D hard and wet. He never had any urinary issues after that. With that said his new vet didn't want to switch his diet. He kept that the same and tried the Novalin N. We seen no improvement. He ended up going up to 3units twice a day and still nothing. Everytime he went back to the vet his numbers were higher and he was losing a little bit of weight at a time. We then switched to Prozinc and 2units twice a day, and still no diet change. He's been on this for a few weeks now but I knew nothing was changing because of the drinking and peeing. I came across this site and a few other Facebook sites and that's lead us to where we are now.

This is our current update as of last night and this AMPS... (I hope I have his spreadsheet linked to my account correctly)

So this is what Tootsies chart looks like since Friday evening when we began at home testing. We have been slowly making the transition with his diet since Friday. He started out with eating Hills Prescription C/D hard and wet food along with Royal Canin Urinary SO wet food. Then we eliminated the hard food completely and continued the C/D and SO for a couple days. Then we elimated those completely and started a medium % carb of fancy feast and friskies wet for a couple days (they were about 12% and 13%, where his others were in the high 20s) Now tomorrow we are starting the low carb, under 10% of the fancy feast and friskes wet and hopefully this will remain his diet from here on out. You can see the differences in his readings already from the small switches. I'm praying and have my fingers crossed things start to improve even more and ultimately find remission. What do you think so far?
 
Hi and welcome. Diet definitely has a huge impact, and it looks like you are seeing a small improvement from it at this point. Hopefully, once he is on a lower carb food, you will see even more improvement. His glucose levels are still really high though. He has yet to even dip below the renal threshold. (By the way, great job starting home testing! :)) I understand wanting to move cautiously and carefully, but keep in mind that the more time he spends in these high numbers, the more likelihood of damage to his organs.

You said you are changing to the lower carb food tomorrow. If there is not a significant drop in his numbers, I would increase the dose. If you have syringes with 1/2 unit markings, you can increase in small increments. .25u increases are normally recommended here. Once you hold a dose for several cycles, if the numbers remain too high, another increase is needed.

I hope you continue to see improvement! If you could update your signature to include some basic info like his age, date of diagnosis, type of insulin and type of glucometer, it would be helpful. Then you do not have to restate those things every time you post.
 
What is the renal threshold? Like mentioned today is his first day on all low carb under 10% wet foods. I was told from other members that we needed to take it slow since he was already on insulin and to not jump right in and change his dosage until getting an idea of how he reacts once all low carb. I also have all that info you mentioned on his spreadsheet. I need to put it somewhere else?
 
AshleyDiamond said:
What is the renal threshold?
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The renal threshold is the point at which glucose starts being dumped into the urine.

AshleyDiamond said:
I was told from other members that we needed to take it slow since he was already on insulin and to not jump right in and change his dosage until getting an idea of how he reacts once all low carb.
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It is very true that you do not want to rush dose changes and that you want to exercise care when changing to lower carb food. However, you also do not want to let him run too high too long. So, if you do not see a significant drop now that he is on low-carb food. It will be time to consider moving that dose up some. As long as you move up in .25u increments and continue to monitor, you are being safe.

I see that you got your first yellow today. Woo hoo! Now, let's hope for some blue!

AshleyDiamond said:
I also have all that info you mentioned on his spreadsheet. I need to put it somewhere else?
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It is helpful if you put it in your signature (same place you have the link to the spreadsheet). You will notice that we all put the info in our signatures so that it is there with every post we make.
 
How do you know based off numbers though that he is near or at the renal threshold? And sorry for the mix up. I posted last night on the main forum and then again made the same post this morning on the Prozinc forum. This is all still very new to us and the information can be overwhelming but I'm doing my best. His numbers are still high but a major change compared to when tested at the vet. When testing there he was always over 500 but is stressed when at the vet which I know affects those numbers. But then they did the fructosamine test to determine what he was averaging over the past 21 days (this test was done on 6/6/18) and he was averaging in the high 600s. That's the day we switched to Prozinc but still continued the same diet. I still seen no changes with the drinking and peeing. I finally took things into my own hands, did a little more research, found this page and some support groups on Facebook, got our meter and started slowly changing that diet. I also was hesitant at first to change diet because of the past urinary issues, but I'm hoping that doesn't return since hard food is now eliminated. Its all just been so much on my little family, going through cancer with our dog and now this with our cat. I didn't even have time to grieve my boy before having to care for my other one and now the care for him is even more consuming.

I will add that info to that section. Thank you.

Also, I have an appointment on 7/6 with the vet. Its actually just to check his levels which I am ibterw to see what he will test this time since making all this change. I will also present my chart. What I don't know is if they test with a pet meter or a human meter. If they do use a pet meter, anyone have tips on explaining why we use the human and what makes it okay to do so? I just know the pet meters tend to read higher. I guess I'm just nervous on how to explain to him everything we are now doing and actually sound like I know what I'm talking about lol.
 
By the way, you are doing a great job. It is overwhelming in the beginning, not to mention frustrating when you find out you cannot just blindly trust what the vet is telling you but have to learn so much and make so many decisions for yourself. And, the loss of a baby is very hard...having it followed so soon by something else bad makes it even worse. At least diabetes is treatable, and it all gets a little less overwhelming/stressful with time.... really.

Some years back, we lost a cat that was almost 20 and had been my husband's since he was a kitten. Then, within a month, we lost my big, sweet boy, Jordan. We knew the first loss was coming due to his age and declining health (not that that makes it easy), but the second one could not have been more of a shock. He was within a couple of months of turning 11 and had not had any health issues. I noticed his belly felt hard one day. Took him to the vet right away, and they drained fluid and blood from it. They had me bring him back for a biopsy where they determine it was cancer. I was on my way to pick him up after that procedure - they had told me he was doing great in recovery - and he died while I was on the way. Heart breaking. :(
 
Looks like you're on the right track with the low carb food. You're finally seeing some decent movement in his numbers today! Now that you are checking regularly and he is on low carb food, you can start to bump up his dose by 0.25u every 3-4 cycles until you see those mid-cycle numbers (i.e. the nadir) move to a healthy range. Ideally his nadir will come down to 80-120 and that may "hopefully" allow his pre-shot numbers to eventually come down over time to below the renal threshold (that's the goal.. doesn't always work out that way though... *ECID*). It's a marathon not a sprint. Take it slow and easy and give him time to adjust to any dose changes.

As far as human vs pet meter.. the main drivers are cost and accessibility. Human meters are just cheaper and easier to access cause you can get them at any drug store in a pinch. They typically read a little lower than pet meters, but in general you are looking for an overall trend, not specific numbers - even the best meters are allowed a 20% variance. The important numbers to remember are the "take action" numbers for hypoglycemia, which are below 50 on a human meter and 62 on a pet meter.

You are doing great! :)
 
Tootsies morning pre check was 368. I then checked at +3 and he was 378. I checked again at +5 and he was 245. He then ate his snack after that check and I just checked again at +7 and he was 402. Is that a big jump? Do you think its from eating at +5? Today is our first day of feeding all low carb foods. This all just makes me so sad and my stress level is through the roof. I cry daily because I just feel helpless. I'm trying so hard to get things more under control because my husband and I have a trip to Mexico at the end of August that is nonrefundable. It was booked before Tootsie was diagnosed. I only have my mom that is able to help give his shots while we are away. That alone has been a struggle because she gets nervous everytime she has to do it. Its just the way she is and even though I tell her she isn't hurting him she still feels bad and thinks she is. She also isn't willing to do the BG test because she already struggles with the insulin shots. I've been told to not worry about that right now as the end of August is still quite sometime away and that depending on how is readings are up until then that maybe we could just reduce the dose that week since she won't the the BG check. Just soooo much happening and I could really use a break in life right now
 
First.. breathe. You are doing great! :bighug::bighug::bighug:

His high number at +7 is probably a bounce from that nice +5 he had early. It could be a little food related, and if that's the case you'll see it come back down a bit, but more likely its just because Tootsie isn't used to seeing yellow numbers. Bounces happen as a broken safety mechanism in the kitty's body, as it tries to protect from going dangerously low. It happens when (1) kitty goes too low, (2) kitty goes lower than normal or (3) kitty goes lower faster than normal. All of this is normal, and is a result of getting him back into lower numbers. This is why it is important to makes changes slowly, so you may want to stick with 2u for another cycle or two til he gets used to the low carb food.

*Edit: in looking at your spreadsheet, the 402 may not be a bounce, he may just have a short curve indicating too little insulin. If he doesn't go too much higher at preshot, you may consider a dose increase tonight.
 
That makes me feel a little better. I would like to keep him at the 2units though for at least a couple of days while his body is getting use to the lower carb food. I'm sure it probably was/is some sort of shock to his system maybe. I've basically been doing everything for at least 2 whole days before switching to something new. Like eliminating the hard food and sticking with his original wet, then to the medium % carb for 2 days and now the low carb. So I think I'll wait to see how things go with the food and his levels at least until Friday until I make any changes.
 
So this is a little off topic but I notice most of your charts in your signature section is just a tiny click able link with your pets name followed by spreadsheet. I've tried researching on how to get mine like that but I can't figure it out. If you look at mine it says "Tootsie's Spreadsheet" but that last isn't clickable, mine has the whole long URL attached. Anyone able to walk me through how to fix that?
 
Type out what you want it to say in your signature, then highlight those words, click on the link icon & paste in the link where it says URL.
 

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When I paste the link in that spot it does what mine already looks like? It shows the whole link and not just "Tootsie's Spreadsheet"
 
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