Simba - The Pancreas Has Awakened! Now What??

[Mary & Simba]

I'll put the start date at April 25th, just a few days after his birthday. We were cruising along with some nice regulated numbers and then he started to drop some no shoot numbers. I would wait and give a shot as the numbers rose but then more no shoot numbers. So for the last 16 days he's been mostly without insulin. His pre-shot numbers are no shoot, but then he rises in the middle, only to drop to a no shoot by pre-shot again.

About the last two months he's been self-regulating using food. So he's free-fed and basically taking control. The free-feeding might be a contributor to the high mid-cycle since he eats once every two hours or so. But I tried taking the food away and got a bounce number with no insulin. I'm thinking his pancreas/liver is interpreting any drop to be a hypo, so he eats to bring his sugar back up, since this is what he did while on insulin.

What I'm wondering, is there anything I can do to help? Or should I just get out of the way and see what happens. I don't want to derail his progress by letting him stew on high numbers. But it seems like he's rejecting any insulin assistance. We have had some bad weather the last few days, which has been a contributor to high sugar in the past, so I'm willing to wave those off because no amount of insulin worked during bad weather at any time.

The 5P's are all present, including playing with gusto. He's a little mopey today, though I wonder if it's due to not being able to keep the dropping numbers up. He's alert and staying awake and upright much longer than usual. Today we have some serious pacing going on, like he's not sure what to do next. He's currently trying to get in the fireplace because he hears some birds chirping up on the roof and it's echoing down the chimney. confused_cat

 

[Sue and Oliver (GA)]

What lovely news and what lovely blues, Mary! Well, your choice is give him a little dab every now and then, or to wait him out and see if he manages this on his own. It might be helpful to look at some of the spreadsheets in the remission thread above and see how others have handled it. If his pancreas is working, food should bring the numbers down rather than make them go up. (If the pancreas is not working, the opposite is true.) You could look at a little lower carb food - some cats are very carb sensitive.

His pancreas is definitely helping out but he doesn't get down to the greens very often. On the other hand, he is consistently below the renal threshold so his pancreas should be healing nicely.

He hasn't gotten down to the scary 40s yet so you do have some room if you wanted to set your shoot number at maybe 150-160 and then try that .10, being sure you can monitor. Or just watch and wait and shoot if he gets up to 200.

What sounds best to you?

 

[Mary & Simba]

He does drop after a meal but then gets a spike, then drops over the next 2 hours, he eats again as soon as his sugar drops but he's only eating a tiny amount. He never was a big eater. If he doesn't eat, the food spike wears off after 4-5 hours and he has a huge BG drop. Maybe I'll try the tiny shot, since he's good at regulating his own lows. I went up to .25 and just got flat high numbers all day. I tried a .10, and I'm not certain it did anything at all, some roller coaster ups and downs maybe, but his numbers seemed to be better when I left him alone, though in an upside down smile. LOL.