Suzanne Kostenko
Member Since 2016
I just want to share my experience from about 6 weeks ago. It was on a weekend when no local vets available. My daughter's cat became lethargic , wouldn't eat, had possible diarrhea. He seemed really ill.
He has history of asthma and gets steroid injection monthly, so we are always on the alert of him developing diabetes. Emergency vet is 150 miles away so we were biding our time to try to get him to his regular vet.
I checked his blood sugar was 256 on feline meter. Hardly above normal but urine showed 4+ glucose and negative ketones. Repeated tests several times over the next few hours. So I started him on 1 unit of lantus every twelve hours, also gave 1 mg of zofran every 8 hrs. Blood sugar continued high and spilling urine glucose. Long story short. His reg vet couldn't see him so had to take him to another town. He still had high glucose, was running a fever and elevated amylase (pancreatitis?). Vet wanted to keep him to run curves etc. I said NO. She thought it was nuts and dangerous to start the insulin. Wanted all decisions to go thru her. NO NO and NO.
Zorro was only on insulin about 4 days, she gave antibiotics and subs fluids , this brought his fever down, he was eating drinking acting normal within about 24-36 hours of treatment.
Moral of the story: If vet had found the elevated blood glucose and started him on insulin without the owner doing home testing and continuing to give insulin for a week or 2 waiting to bring cat back in, he would have been having hypos. As it turned out it seems an episode of pancreatitis brought on the elevated glucose and when that was treated successfully the glucose returned to normal. (Remission?) We check his glucose weekly now, so far he has remained healthy. I am convinced that being able to jump on the elevated glucose within hours of it coming to our attention led to his remission of symptoms. ( I do have a diabetic cat that has been well regulated on lantus but I had not been educated regarding feline diabetes at his diagnosis)
He has history of asthma and gets steroid injection monthly, so we are always on the alert of him developing diabetes. Emergency vet is 150 miles away so we were biding our time to try to get him to his regular vet.
I checked his blood sugar was 256 on feline meter. Hardly above normal but urine showed 4+ glucose and negative ketones. Repeated tests several times over the next few hours. So I started him on 1 unit of lantus every twelve hours, also gave 1 mg of zofran every 8 hrs. Blood sugar continued high and spilling urine glucose. Long story short. His reg vet couldn't see him so had to take him to another town. He still had high glucose, was running a fever and elevated amylase (pancreatitis?). Vet wanted to keep him to run curves etc. I said NO. She thought it was nuts and dangerous to start the insulin. Wanted all decisions to go thru her. NO NO and NO.
Zorro was only on insulin about 4 days, she gave antibiotics and subs fluids , this brought his fever down, he was eating drinking acting normal within about 24-36 hours of treatment.
Moral of the story: If vet had found the elevated blood glucose and started him on insulin without the owner doing home testing and continuing to give insulin for a week or 2 waiting to bring cat back in, he would have been having hypos. As it turned out it seems an episode of pancreatitis brought on the elevated glucose and when that was treated successfully the glucose returned to normal. (Remission?) We check his glucose weekly now, so far he has remained healthy. I am convinced that being able to jump on the elevated glucose within hours of it coming to our attention led to his remission of symptoms. ( I do have a diabetic cat that has been well regulated on lantus but I had not been educated regarding feline diabetes at his diagnosis)
