Sneakers 1-17-13

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hmjohnston

hmjohnston

Member Since 2011
Taking Sneakers in today. Noticed she didn't want me touching her rear area, legs, and paws (MEROW!) on Tuesday evening and last night she tried to bite me when I petted her down her spine and growled at me for the longest time. With her numbers in the yellows lately that I contributed to me being gone and the screw ups in her dose to not get a consistent 5 day line I now wonder if something has been going on that she has been hiding from me and now she can't any longer.

No more jumping up- her food in on the floor. I do pick her up, carefully, to put her on the freezer to test and then carefully put her down again.

I'm wondering about... hypothyroid (or is it hyper?), pancreatitis (but she still eats and it is increasing and no throwing up that I can find), cosequin isn't working on the arthritis at all, or something I have no idea what.

My baby is old and it is cold outside and she doesn't like it.

Good note- her last two PS (AM and PM) have been blue- 198 and 191.
 
Poor Sneakers! I hope all goes well at the vet. It could be the arthritis with the cold, dry weather. Do you give B12 at all? I wonder if that would help.

Vicky took Gandalf for acupuncture for his arthritis and it helped a lot. A heating pad might also help her to feel better. You can get pads you heat in the micro and place under a pad or blanket. Here's pne from PetSmart: http://www.petsmart.com/product/ind...gMgod9A0A2g&lmdn=Beds&f=PAD/psNotAvailInUS/No.

Hope she feels better.
 
Well- after a trip to the vet (she puked in the car- twice), the vet visit- was put in a cage while I went back outside to deal with the puke (she NOT happy and the guy had to come get me to get her out of the cage )- getting poked and prodded and her blood drawn- cussing out everyone who touched her (no biting) and I think she peed on them while they were drawing blood :lol: as well. All this is highly abnormal for her, even at the vets she was never aggressive like this before.

Vet thinks her thyroid is acting up from symptoms described but is sending it off to be sure, plus doing a full panel of blood work- last one was April, so we can check on her kidneys and other levels. He talked about a pill starting with a T (didn't write it down) to give her if it is the thyroid. He did mention an immediate, short term (3 day max) drug called Onsior that I will look up to see if it is diabetic safe.

Took her home- she refused to come inside- layed on the gravel until I picked her up and put her on the back porch where she laid in the weak sun for an hour and then consented to come in (door was open the whole time and she laid with her back on the doorstep). And then she came in and clawed her way up on the couch and laid down next to me with her head on my knee. That, more than anything, told me she wasn't feeling well at all.

She hadn't eaten anything all day until I got home- she ate maybe an ounce of the raw chicken (and puked it up in the car- all of it) and refused to eat until around 8:45. So no shot at shot time. She did drink the water/gravy a few times but not the food.

Her BG at 2(+9) was 205. Her BG at 7 (+13) was 340's and at 8:45 (+15-ish) when I finally got her something to eat it was 378 and I shot 22 u. This morning at her normal PS was 252- LOTS better. Shot 17u as she was getting shot 'early' from her last one. I can't move her back to shot schedule the normal way as my work schedule does not permit it so I just reduced the dose.
 
What a rough day for her - and you. Has she had thyroid issues before? I'm not sure that would explain the pain when being touched though. That is worrisome.

I think the med you are thinking if is tapazole for hyperthyroid. Methimazole is the generic of that and available at a local pharmacy for less than the tapazole from the vet.

Is she eating better today? I hope so. Poor baby. Give her a pat from me.
 
Haven't heard anything yet- they haven't gotten the results back.

She was eating better today- at 1AM, 3AM, 5AM, and 7AM- about 1.5 ounces each time I left out some food, too. I will discontinue the raw for a while b/c I don't think she would eat it right now. Seriously looking into setting up the webcam now but since I moved her food to the floor she might not stay in the kitchen now :roll: .

Looking up hyper-T and it is tapozole for the meds. Also radiation- only one place in AR that has it- 35-45 minutes away and outside her area of travel. Wondering about the trans-dermal gel as pilling her isn't easy.
 
well- nothing wrong in her numbers.

The vet hasn't seen them yet so will call me back tomorrow once he's had a chance to. I am to observe her tonight and see if she is still touchy about her back parts.
 
That's a relief so far. :smile:

My older girls could be like that at times. I don't think it ever really lead to anything significant. Chip is my oldest guy at only 7 so I don't know what the old men are like. But my Tortie was paralyzed for 10 days when she was only 14 years old. Once we got through that (without even going to the vet) she was right back to jumping up on the bed (as normal) for years after that.

She would bite me when I tried to groom her lower back or get near the base of her tail. She had blocked anal glands about every other year of her adult life. Had surgery once on each side, couple of rounds of ab, and several times did nothing and it cleared up on it's own. I suspect that's why she didn't want me near the base of her tail. But it could also be arthritis, or may have something to do with seasons and shedding?
 
WOW, 22 U, I just said I thought a specialist was crazy for thinking a cat could take up to 30U Levemir. Guess I was way off base on that one.
 
Deb, those sorts of very high doss are almost exclusively for cats that have acromegaly and/or extreme insulin resistance, or Cushings. Acro is a pituitary tumor that excretes an insulin-like growth factor that binds to insulin receptors so the real insulin can't bind there. It takes a huge amount of insulin to compete with the IGF-1.

These are not the standard feline diabetic, so for any vet to say, or imply, that 30u doses are expected for a regular FD is misleading and indicates that vet doesn't know enough about the disease and treatment to be giving ANY advice on it.
 
Sneakers is doing well, and has settled into her familiar routine of sleeping during the day, eating occasionally, using the LB, sleeping, waiting for me to get home from work to eat/get tested and shot, sleeping all night, use the lb, eat some more... Same ol' same ol' :lol: :lol:

Back is still tender but I can pick her up without her hissing at me. She seems to understand I pick her up to take her to her night bed (heated cat bed in my room) and she will stay there most of the night- unless she thinks I didn't feed her enough and will walk back to the kitchen :roll: .

Meds- cosequin one pill BID (for two pills), 1/2 pill gaba BID (total one pill), mirilax 1/8 tsp BID or more as needed, and insulin to numbers.

Currently at 22 for almost a month now, so we've reached a good level I think. more sends her into a tail spin roller coaster ride. Not that I think that is her 'dose' b/c she isn't in blues or greens but she isn't bouncing to the moon after hitting a low.
 
Heather, I think managing the BGs so SHE is feeling her best is the right thing to do. Some cats just can't be tightly (or even snugly) regulated. Better to be even and comfortable than swinging and feeling crappy.

She has a nice cat routine going. Glad her back is getting better. Did you even figure out what the problem was? Just arthritis kicking up a notch? Maybe the cold weather was a factor as well.
 
I'm thinking cold weather, for one, arthritis agrivated by the cold weather, for two, and the third is that she was finally off the initial dose time for the cosequin and I dropped it from two pills to one pill a day- just when the cold weather hit.

I can touch her back area, not her feet, but she doesn't mind me petting softly on her spine right now. So that is an improvement.
 
Makes sense. I had an arthritic kitty back in the 80s and there wasn't any treatment, but I know putting her under the covers with me at night, in the winter, really helped her feel better.
 
Hey Heather -

The docs at CSU warned us that post-SRT it's common for our Acros to go HYPO-thyroid. Checked Grayson at 4 months and sure enough he's low. For HYPO-t, he's on Thyrosin 5mg/day. He takes it in a bowl of FD chicken crumbs! GULP! :lol: If Sneakers' numbers are good, I'd guess it's the weather. I do see a little change from Grayson with the temp... but also his ear infection, and just this week, his anal glands. Never heard of them as an issue in kitties - only dogs. He seems MUCH happier since they've been expressed - although he's still not sauntering around... more like swaggering! :lol: :lol: :lol:

Hoping your special little girl is feeling better really soon!

And Deb, as Heather said, 30 is an extreme dose - most vets and high-dose kitty parents - think that anything more than 4-5 units BID is high dose. The Acros have a whole other thing going on, as she so expertly described. That's why we have disclaimers on our signatures.

Liu-Ann
 
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