Thank You

This is my first post, but I have read many and gained a lot of info on this wonderful site. When my fat furball was diagnosed with diabetes I felt lost. This website contains a wealth of information that has helped me make knowledgeable decisions for the care of my kitty and gain confidence in caring for him.
My Charlie will be 8 next month. He was diagnosed last August with diabetes after suddenly losing half his body weight and having lots of issues with excess urine. He is a large cat, but was overweight for many years. Our vet warned of the possible consequences of his obesity a few years ago, but we also have a smaller cat, Molly, who would end up starving every time I tried to decrease their food. After a month of many tears and sleepless nights following his diagnosis, he regained his shiny coat, a healthy portion of his weight; and I even got good at giving his twice daily injections. Even my husband learned how to inject the insulin so I could have a "girls night" once a month without having to leave early to care for Charlie.
We had a BG curve done in Dec and he was perfect at 3U 2x per day of PZI. I thought all was going well until this past Saturday. We had a very serious hypo event. Charlie started meowing strangely and then panting. When he wouldn't eat any food I tried karo syrup and he vomited immediately. We rushed him to the vet where he started seizing, his heart rate and body temp plummeted, and he was comatose. After 45 minutes of our vet frantically working, he started to come around. After a few hours of IV fluids and warming blankets he was doing much better. We brought him home and kept him warm because his temp hadn't reached normal yet. Feeding him a little every hour throughout the night, I kept vigil and he recovered quite well. BG and fructosamine levels are good and the hypo incident is probably due to my switching one of his foods. We have put him back on his original diet and he is his usual perky self. I just wanted to say thank you to everyone who contributes to this site. Without the info on this site, I might not have been able to recognize his trouble in time--so Thank You to all!

 

Wow! How scary!

I do have to ask though, you aren't giving the same dose of insulin now right? or is he still getting any insulin? and have you or are you gonna start hometesting? if you haven't or aren't considering it yet, i would encourage you to sooner than later. it will help prevent another hypo event.

welcome aboard!

 

If you have been lurking and learning, you'll know that we are pretty pushy about hometesting.....after this incident I would hope you see the need for it, as insulin can needs can change even if you haven't changed foods, etc. Your boy would be a lot safer if you did...