Queenie PMPS (Midnight) 362, +4 477, +8 492, AMPS 403, +5 507, +10 481 ??

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Chris & Queenie

Chris & Queenie

Member Since 2015
Good Morning All,

Yesterday was quite a roller coaster. Queenie is bright this am. Good P's all around
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/3-13-queenie-amps-508-9-185-11-349.134520/

Since I got all mixed up because I delayed a shot I am now on a midnight and noon schedule, so hopefully you all can deal with my spreadsheet. I got up in the wee hours to check on her because I got really nervous last night about giving a full 2 units, but the numbers were climbing and I felt that it was best. I think the biggest difference between the two overnights is that I withheld food overnight after I saw her number approach 700 late on the 13th. Last night was a much different story so I allowed access to food. I know this has to be consistent. I know I have to fast her for 2 hours before the PM or AM PS...... Or should I? If I'm freed feeding right now should I not be taking the reading even though she wasn't fasted, isn't it more reflective of her "natural state"? She usually has no problem with appetite, she is very underweight because her dx was most likely waaaaay after onset of symptoms (mom's cat, not mine)....So I want her to put some weight back on.

Ready for your feedback.
 
With an underweight cat, I think I'd at least make sure there is one meal available in the night. You do want to pick it up in the last 2 hours just so the preshot test isn't food influenced. ( my climate is cool enough that I can just add water, even make a little moat around the food, and it stays fresh for hours)
If she tends to eat it all before then, all the better.

the first suggestion I have for your spreadsheet is to go change the color of your shot time to something other than the
green. Some of us are color oriented when we look at the ss and it's confusing to have the same green as the bg codes.
pick a color that isn't one of the colors across the top for bg ranges.

secondly, on 3/12 , you had a huge bounce in response to the 118 ( and Queenie may have even gone lower than that 118)
hence the black 648 at shot time......

Either her body isn't used to nice blue bg's or even possible green, next time you see blue , you might want to get an extra
test or two.... looks like her nadir might be a little later in the cycle.... like +7....

it may show that 2 units is a little more than she needs but we need to catch the lowest number to see.....

it looks like you are doing well with monitoring....
 
hmm... I see you had lots of pointers yesterday, much the same.....
( I wasn't here yesterday so I am just catching up with some )

hope Suzanne can help you get the ss adjusted.....
 
Thanks, the ss formatting for the time column needs to be changed and when I try to do it it affects more of the spread sheet than I need to "fix". So for now the PM time will be neon green until I can get help from Suzanne. I was able to add a column for the AM time that did not import the formatting. This is a bit more complicated than I can adjust apparently :-) I will keep tweaking.

I am anxious for the BG swings to not be so wide. and I wonder about the feeding schedule.
 
A better way to note the time shot might be to put it in the cell with the number of units shot like I have done in Vyktor's spreadsheet. Then you can get rid of th time columns altogether.
 
Just saying good morning!

The thing about feeding in the 2 hours prior to a shot is just so that when you test at preshot you know you are getting the actual blood sugar and not measuring a food spike from recently eating. As long as you KNOW that, if for some reason you need to feed her then, go ahead. Most cats don't need to eat every hour or two, so it's not an issue.

If a cat will graze it's fine to just leave food out and pick up the dish at +10. If a cat is a hoover and will eat all the food the second it's put down it might be a good idea to invest in a timed feeder, although you said you have a lot of cats, so you'd have to figure out how to get the food just to Queenie.

Some people find that feeding their cat any significant volume after the nadir (low point) of the cycle can really cause the insulin to not last til the next shot. The insulin is strongest in the first half of the cycle, and sometimes feeding after then can act as a brake on the insulin. It's strength is waning in the second half of the cycle, so many people feed most of the food in the first half and then minimize what the cat eats in the second half of the cycle. Punkin had acromegaly, which is accompanied by a voracious appetite. There was no grazing for him. We fed punkin 3oz at each preshot, then 1.5oz at each +3, and beyond that he got cooked chicken breast bites as pokey treats (1/2" cubes). They have minimal carbs in them and we didn't find that they influenced his blood sugar.

What's your desired shooting schedule? You may want to just skip a shot in order to get back on time. If you skip tonight's shot, for example, you could then shoot at any point after that that you want your new schedule to be. We shot punkin at 7am/pm, basically as soon as we got up, so that we could be able to monitor him better at night. Typically we were up til his pm+4.5 (11:30pm) which made it easy to monitor him at night and be confident about how low he might go.

When you've had a chance to read through all the info from yesterday you'll probably have some questions. Fire away!
 
Hi All,

Arggghhh! I promise not to give up, but this is a wee bit perplexing and I almost feel like I just need to set some guidelines and stick to them. To free feed or not, I think the free feeding is keeping the numbers up, although I also don't want to jump to any conclusions about a pattern yet. I am just getting my act together with the Spread Sheet and there's really no rush, so I'm not going to beat myself up. I need to look over the info from Julie about SLGS or TR, I just worry so much about a hypo crash. Just getting back from a funeral and should now be consistently around for several days. Queenie is doing well, she's very satiated right now, so I do worry a bit about free feeding (want to be sure she'll eat when I shoot), but so far a two hour fast seems to be enough to keep her interested. Long term free feeding will be difficult because of the other animals in the house.

I'm beginning to think that maybe a 11:00 ish schedule may not be too bad. I can probably live with it socially much better (for me), and if I'm worried I can always do like last night and just get up @ +4 and check her.
 
One of the most frustrating things about the sugardance is that you just have to try different things until you find something that works for you and your cat

If 11 works for you, there's no reason you can't do that. I am NOT a morning person!!! When we first started I figured I'd just shoot at 11/11 (I'm a pretty bad night owl) but after having to stay up ALL night several times because China was running too low, I had an "ah ha" moment. As much as I hated getting up early, I know I can usually fall back to sleep, so we changed to a 6/6 schedule.

I still hate that alarm in the morning, but I can get up and test/feed/shoot all within about 10 minutes and then I can go back and snooze a little longer! At PMPS time (6pm) I'm able to routinely be up until past midnight, so can easily get up to at least +6....so even if she's running too low on that PM cycle, I don't usually end up having to stay up the entire night
 
Vyktor was always free fed so I kept to that throughout treating his diabetes except for lifting the food at +10. Grazing is good for diabetic cats as it puts less stress on the pancreas. Also smaller amounts eaten at a time will result in lower food spikes. I don't think its food that's keeping Queenie up (assuming it's low carb) she hasn't been treated for very long so what you're seeing is pretty normal, you just haven't found her dose yet. The two hours without food was usually enough to make Vyktor want a snack with his shot but if he didn't it didn't matter. With Lantus it is not essential to have a meal with a shot, you just want to know that they will eat. You need to be a bit more careful with dosing if the kitty is off their food.

You may want to start practising (with coloured water, cold tea/coffee) drawing up a 2.25 unit dose as that looks to me like where Queenie will be heading next.
 
Are there syringes that allow measuring in partial units?

And though I'm being very careful I keep wondering if I'm just not getting the shot into her. I have done subQ planty and I am parting the fur and not really pulling up a tent but going in pretty straight, not into the muscle but even so I'm beginning to wonder....
 
Here's a post on Testing and Shooting Tips that may help. I find the roll method helpful.

We use syringes with 1/2 unit markings, where they are available. You can get them in North America and Europe. They are syringes designed for children. You have to eyeball the .25U unit measurements. The New to the Group Sticky has pictures of 1/2 unit marked syringes in it, and how to measure those smaller measurements.
 
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