Ramone's Journey

Jerica&ramone

Jerica&ramone

Member Since 2019
My boy was diagnosed with Diabetes on June 6/19 - we started cannisulin and realized quickly it was not working. Switched to prozinc where I thought we had some progress but around November I noticed his legs were starting to go so back to vet- he had UTI and we treated it. Stayed on Prozinc then got alpha trak rental from vet to do home testing ( was not even mentioned previously and did not find these pages until a month ago ) Seen some #'s from Prozinc and it was all very high ... 22 and higher... ( I am in Canada ) So we have not switched to Lantus. And started 1 unit and did some readings, you'll see the few readings I did on spreadsheet with Alphatrak.. all very high #'s. So we upped the dose from 1 unit , 2 unit, 3 units and now 4 units starting Saturday night. Where I feel there might be SOME progress. I sent info to my vet and she's advising to start 5 units tonight... but I think I should wait a bit and get more readings.. We currently have the lifestyle libre monitor on him so I can get a LOT of readings ... And I will do home testing after the 14 days with this monitor. ( I know using different monitors can give diff #'s ) Should I keep him at 4 units for longer?
Do you think he's insulin resistant? Appreciate any input. Feeding FF/ Friskies 10% carb or less - no dry food. Free feed and pull food away 2 hours pre shot.
zobaline on the way to try and help with neuropathy

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...m8AyO8taRxGozHBIogTIffKz8B7EAGr3AOLh/pubhtml#
 
Welcome!!

What was the dose of Prozinc your kitty was getting? Generally, when switching from a non-depot insulin to a depot insulin you can maintain the same dose as the previous insulin.

That said, because Lantus is a depot type of insulin, you don't usually see an immediate response. It can take 5 - 7 days for the depot to stabilize before you see any movement in numbers and if you started at a considerably lower dose than your cat was receiving on Prozinc, it will take a bit for you to get back to that dose.

We also do not raise doses in 1.0u increments. Doses are raised in 0.25u to no more than 0.5u amounts. If you raise the dose in too large of an amount, you may zip past what would be an effective dose. Also, because of the depot, each time you change a dose, the dose needs to stabilize. The minimum anount of time needed before changing a dose is 3 days/6 cycles. If you change doses too rapidly, it can result in wonky numbers.

So, can you fill us in. What was Ramone's dose of Prozinc when you were switching to Lantus.
 
Sienne and Gabby (GA) said:
Welcome!!

What was the dose of Prozinc your kitty was getting? Generally, when switching from a non-depot insulin to a depot insulin you can maintain the same dose as the previous insulin.

That said, because Lantus is a depot type of insulin, you don't usually see an immediate response. It can take 5 - 7 days for the depot to stabilize before you see any movement in numbers and if you started at a considerably lower dose than your cat was receiving on Prozinc, it will take a bit for you to get back to that dose.

We also do not raise doses in 1.0u increments. Doses are raised in 0.25u to no more than 0.5u amounts. If you raise the dose in too large of an amount, you may zip past what would be an effective dose. Also, because of the depot, each time you change a dose, the dose needs to stabilize. The minimum anount of time needed before changing a dose is 3 days/6 cycles. If you change doses too rapidly, it can result in wonky numbers.

So, can you fill us in. What was Ramone's dose of Prozinc when you were switching to Lantus.
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Hello! Thank you!

So with the Prozinc we were up to 17 units on the U100 syringes. So I think thats around 6-7 units- I am on the FB group and one of the Admins told me there was an equation to get what actual amount of units he was getting..
Pretty sure it was in that range 6-7 units we were on the Prozinc from mid June/ July til mid December when we switched to Lantus.

Started 1 unit of lantus and that is when I started testing at home and seen his #'s and he was always RED - so we've increased 1 unit each time in last 4 weeks and now up to 4 units as of Saturday night PM shot .. and then I did a curve sat night - sunday ...

So with what being said, I should keep him at 4 units for a cpl more days and get as many readings as possible then re-assess after that ?
 
Hello from another Canuck on the westcoast! You’ve got great help already, especially from Sienne. And I’m so glad you’re learning lots here and have already made the changes.

Keep asking and answering questions so we can best help Ramone :)
 
Hello from another we(s)t coaster, just up the hill from Crista. You have a great looking kitty!

A couple favours to ask. First, could you arrange the spreadsheet so the oldest stuff is on the top, and the newer reading are on the bottom. I think it just means moving the 2019 stuff to the top. Second, what day did you start Lantus? I am trying to figure out how long you've been on it, and how long you held each dose. I would like to see at least one more day on the 4 units, for a total of six cycles. At that time, we may just take you up to 5 units, not because we do that size jumps, but because that's closer to what you should have used as a starting dose.

A bit of background on me. Neko was started on Caninsulin, and we switched after a couple months. Got up to five units of Caninsulin, made the mistake of starting Lantus at 1 unit. Took over two months getting back to 5 units of Lantus, ended up needing more. My girl had a couple of secondary endocrine conditions that meant she needed a higher dose. So I have some experience with insulin resistance. I need more data before I can comment on that for Ramone.

One more thing, you don't need to use the Alphatrack. The test strips are horribly expensive. Most of us use human meters, our dosing methods and research behind them were written assuming people are using human meters.
 
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Wendy&Neko said:
Hello from another we(s)t coaster, just up the hill from Crista. You have a great looking kitty!

A couple favours to ask. First, could you arrange the spreadsheet so the oldest stuff is on the top, and the newer reading are on the bottom. I think it just means moving the 2019 stuff to the top. Second, what day did you start Lantus? I am trying to figure out how long you've been on it, and how long you held each dose. I would like to see at least one more day on the 4 units, for a total of six cycles. At that time, we may just take you up to 5 units, not because we do that size jumps, but because that's closer to what you should have used as a starting dose.

A bit of background on me. Neko was started on Caninsulin, and we switched after a couple months. Got up to five units of Caninsulin, made the mistake of starting Lantus at 1 unit. Took over two months getting back to 5 units of Lantus, ended up needing more. My girl had a couple of secondary endocrine conditions that meant she needed a higher dose. So I have some experience with insulin resistance. I need before data before I can comment on that for Ramone.

One more thing, you don't need to use the Alphatrack. The test strips are horribly expensive. Most of us use human meters, our dosing methods and research behind them were written assuming people are using human meters.
Click to expand...


Yes I will fix up my spreadsheet tonight. I didn't start the spreadsheet until the new Year but had some data from before so I wanted to add it in.

We started Lantus on Dec 16th. Have not held dose longer than 5 days at this point as my vet knows I am desperately trying to get him stable ( neuropathy seems to be getting worse ) So we have bumped up 1 unit each time we get some readings of the previous doses. As the 1 unit/2 unit didn't seem to be doing anything at all.

I will go back tonight and adjust my SS I think I have more readings from the alpha track when I first started him on it ( I didn't buy one - rented one from vet ) I will be buying a human meter once the lifestyle monitor is off of him. I've been watching a lot of videos on home testing and it doesn't seem to be so bad and I'm lucky I have a very patient boy who doesn't put up too much fuss.

I will keep him at 4 units and gather more data! Stay tuned for an updated spreadsheet.

I'm so grateful for this site and getting advice with real people with real experiences.. Makes me feel so not alone in all this, its been an on going battle for last 6-7 months.

Thank you :)
 
Prozinc is a U40 insulin vs Lantus, which is a U100 insulin.. You have the correct syringes for Lantus. The conversion is 2.5 times when using a U100 syringe with a U40 insulin. Thus, you were dosing around 7u of Prozinc. It's not surprising that you're not seeing much activity with Lantus by dropping back to 1.0u.
 
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