? Rocky - No shot for 4 months, BG slighty rising & diagnosed with CKD, help interperting results

Jim (NJ)

Jim (NJ)

Member Since 2019
Hello Everyone,

Its been a little while since my last post but life has never been better for Rocky! We started dropping his dose from 4u in October of last year til he eventually went down to no shots starting off 2020!!!! His numbers were in 80-100 range for January and his numbers have been slightly higher this month in the 90-120 range. Seeing the upward trend with his numbers, I figured it could be due to stress in life but Im also not sure when I should be looking to start re-shooting him again? We moved away from our vet so he has not seen one since he started his journey to remission. I wanted to see if there is anything "to do" so to speak while in remission or just more monitor his numbers and if they continue to go up then at some point you restart the insulin correct? He isn't acting any different in Jan vs Feb and overall his health seems to be great since we fixed our little guy! Big difference from when he was diagnosed last year in April to today!

Its been such a amazing journey to see his improvement and I don't believe he would of recovered without the assistance I received from the community here. Our family is so grateful and can not express the love we have for our little furry guy! Thank you All!
 
So good to hear the happy update on Rocky!!!! It really is amazing how resilient cats are, and how fast they can turn around after getting proper treatment for FD. Yay Rocky!!!!

As for the upward trend in numbers, I think what I would do is to prioritize looking for a new vet, and take him in for a once-over, just to make sure it isn't just the stress from the move and he doesn't have something starting up. One possibility that is a common culprit in bringing cats out of remission (which I don't think Rocky is yet, but it's really good that you are being vigilant about this!) is teeth. Had Rocky ever had problems with his teeth? He might be due for a cleaning.

Other than that, just keep doing what you are doing and keeping an eye on the numbers while enjoying life with your furry buddy!
 
Other than a vet check to make sure Rocky's OK, it could be possible that his pancreatic beta cells were not fully recovered when took him off of insulin. You dropped in half unit amounts, and went from 0.5 units to zero units. We find remissions are more likely to stick better if insulin is given as long as safely possible, so that means a more gradual reduction in dose. TR would have had you go from 0.5 to 0.25, then 0.1 units.

So you could monitor and see if his numbers get worse. It could be just a blip, or seasonal.
 
I was able to take him a new vet and the vet determined he has kidney disease due to his high urea nitrogen & Creatinine levels :( She wanted to get a fructose sample & urine sample done as well too but the urine was not concentrated enough. He did not appear to have an UTI but she said sometimes they can have one and it be hidden to the test, so it couldn't hurt if we wanted to try antibiotics which we did. We finished 14 days of antibiotics but at least slightly high BG levels have remained about the same. She said he teeth needed a cleaning so its possible that could be a factor in his BG levels still being high. His appetite has seemed to increase too in the past 2 weeks so Im not sure why that is. I am going to call the vet this week to find out what are the next steps she recommends but Im not quite sure what to do here anymore.

She wanted me to take him back to Redbank Vet Hospital which I rejected due to the bad experience we had and the insane cost associated with the visits. We do not want to pursue kidney replacement and quite frankly don't have the money to afford it nor want to put him through all of that. It took him 6 months to grow his hair back from having his belly shaved during the summer for an ultrasound and I dont really want to put him through all of it for when all we were really told was they would need to do more test = more $$. So we spent over over $1k a visit for basically nothing when I learned way more and helped save his life longer with the help of this community.

I guess getting the teeth cleaning would be the next good move. I am still trying to learn about kidney disease and from my understanding, he would be considered stage 2 due to unconcentrated urine & Creatinine > 2.2? I was able to find some good info that I could understand from https://www.bestfriendsvet.com/library/cats/kidney-disease-in-cats/ . If anyone is able to look at his test results and provide their opinion, it would be much appreciated. I feel very overwhelmed with alot of the information at times and obviously want to do the best or whatever I can for my little guy.

Thank you all... Stay safe & quarantined!!!
 

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Hi. It does look like early kidney disease based on blood tests and dilute urine provided he wasn’t dehydrated. My vet always wants to repeat the tests in about a month. The fructosamine is normal and your tests aren’t real high. I’d get done tests about three hours after eating to see if they are lower.

I’m hoping others will chime in.
 
I don't believe he was dehydrated when we took the urine sample but it was at the end of the day so I will try again next time in the morning. He drinks plenty of water and his appetite seemed to increase over the past 3 weeks. When we tapered him off of insulin 4 months ago his appetite decreased so maybe its just returning to what it was. From reading about CKD and all the fear of loss of appetite, I feel like him eating more due to his numbers rising or whatever, is maybe not a bad thing?

I started getting +3 today and will read up more felinecrf.org That is exactly the type of information I was looking for and doesn't seem to hard to digest thanks to how it is explained. Thank you soo much and everyone for your reply's, should I make a new post or change the title to try to get more eyes and someone that can help interpret his test results?
 
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You can collect first thing of the morning urine at home, and take it into the vet for them to check the specific gravity. You don't need to take Rocky in for that.

If the labs had been done with Idexx, you'd also have an SDMA value, which is useful for kidney disease detection.

To get more comments from people on your labs, it's useful to add them to the Labs page of your spreadsheet. Make sure you update the reference ranges to what is on the labs sheet you have. The Labs page is handy or keeping track of trends over time.

You might want to experiment seeing if Rocky would like some of the lower phosphorus, low carb canned foods. The Fancy Feast is pretty high in phosphorus. His P numbers aren't bad yet, but that's a common thing to happen as kidney disease progresses. You have time to try the experiment.

His blood sugar numbers continue to creep up. I'm wondering if his beta cells are getting a little tired, from the sudden withdrawal of insulin? We find that keeping giving insulin as long as you safely can will help give stronger remissions. Good to see you are keeping an eye on the numbers.
 
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