Kim,
I'm looking back on Bob's log, and here's what I saw:
I always administered his sub-q lactated ringers somewhere in between his morning and evening shots. No specific times, just whenever I had time during the day with my spastic schedule. He was getting 100ccs of ringers (with added potassium) for basically the whole time I was using insulin after the first week, so about 9 weeks. It was every other day for the first month, and then twice a week for the rest of the time. He is still getting them twice a week for 2 more weeks when the bag runs out. If his K is okay then, I won't have to continue. Even if it is, I'm thinking about asking for some type of supplement rather than the bagged fluids. I hate giving him fluids. Especially since I'm not poking him with a syringe now, and the only discomfort he otherwise has to deal with is an every other day ear poke, which he doesn't even care about anymore. He's like, "okay yeah whatever dad, where's my treat?"
It looks like I would get a lower PMPS on the day I gave him fluids than he tested at for AMPS. But in most cases, his AMPS the next morning was lower than the previous day. Then he'd go back up on day two and three after the fluids. On day 3 (this is when I was doing twice a week fluids), I'd give him fluids during the day, and the cycle would repeat itself.
I'm looking in my files for the numbers for the first month, but haven't found the right pile yet. Towards the end of June, I started keeping it all in the same notebook but prior to that, it was just on separate sheets of paper I would fax to my vet every week to ten days....
There are a couple issues with my data compared to yours however. On June 27th, I pretty much quit following my vets dosing advice, and started to adjust Bob's dose based on PS numbers. Before that, he had been getting 3u in the AM and 4 in the PM. (Amazing looking back at how many things I did along the way that were contrary to protocals here, like unequal doses in the AM and PM. I'm damned lucky that Bob and I made it through this thing this far). So it's really hard to say whether the numbers he gave me each day were because of the doses or because of the fluids. The pattern does show however that he'd be lower BG for about 24 hours after fluids, and then climb some for the next two days.
Another huge difference between what you're doing and what I did - From the day the vet gave me a bag of fluids to take home, which was a week or so after I first started home testing and shooting in May, Bob was given insulin inter-muscularly rather than sub-q. He would get an IM shot in the back leg (left in the morning, right at night) rather than sub-q. I have read here that this is just not done, and the reason I remember cited was that it changes the absorbtion rate of the insulin. In spite of that, from around May 18th? or so until July 19th when I gave him his last dose, he got IM shots. From the few curves that I ran, his nadir was between +4.5 to +5 rather than at +6. So yes, it seems the insulin was absorbed more quickly than normal. I'll post something in the Think Tank about the whole IM thing, don't want to hijack this thread.
The long and short of this, Kim, is that I did see a correlation of the fluids dropping the BG level for about 24 hours, and I'm inclined to agree with Larry that it must just dilute the glucose in the blood and lower the level. It would be interesting to see if others who give regular fluids have seen this same thing with their sugarkitties.
Carl in SC
