? Switch from Novolin to Lantus

[mpainter21]

Hello all,

My kitty Jace is a very fragile diabetic. He went through DKA about 2 months ago and is a very skinny diabetic. We've been doing everything we can to get him to regulate. He has been on Novolin since diagnosis. He started at 1 unit bid. He then was increased to 2 units bid following the DKA. We just switched him to Lantus this morning and his vet has monitored him all day. They started him at 1 unit bid, but mentioned that next week we may need to bump him to 1.5 units bid. Is this normal when switching to Lantus? I'm scared that a dosage decrease will send him into DKA again.

 

[Bobbie And Bubba]

Hi There and Welcome to the best place you never wanted to be. So glad that you have switched Jace to Lantus as it is easier to work with. A few questions:

How long ago was Jace DX diabetic?
How much does Jace weigh?
How underweight is Jace?
Are you home testing to know what number you are shooting.
Are you feeding a Low Carb wet diet?
Is Jace eating well for you right now?
How old is Jace?

Sorry for all the questions but they will help us help you.


We generally do increases in .25 units but with a DKA kitties the goal to make sure they are getting enough insulin, eating, and do not have any systemic infection or stress.
The recipe for DKA is = not enough insulin + in appetence + system stress or infection.

If you are not home testing all ready, it is very important. We can help you learn how to do that as it is not necessary to take Jace to the vets for weekly curves as it is expensive and Jace will be stressed and his numbers will reflect that and the dose advice from the vet could be too high because of that inflated number.

Lots of us use human meters like ones you can get at Walmart, the Relion, and there are several different ones. The test strips for human meters are much less money than the pet meters. Your vet might try to sell you a pet meter but unless you have lots of $$ to spend on the strips, I would get a human meter because our protocol for dosing is based on human meters.

 

[Bobbie And Bubba]

Here is the link for a updated food chart.

http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/threads/dr-pierson-new-food-chart.174147/