Ilkka and Tom
Member Since 2010
Hi guys. Tom's at 301 PS this AM -- not that this is such a disaster BUT it is the first time he has had a pink number in three weeks, and I have been gradually increasing the dose. For the last few days he has not been acting right - lethargic, not happy at all.
I should give a word of preface because I have been off the reservation in terms of procedure, one of the reasons I did have not been posting "condos" -- did not want to confuse newbies and I don't have the energy to defend what I have been doing. In a word, there has been method, maybe even sound method, except my execution sucks. Ok so my judgment is not always the best either. But now something else is going on, and I have no idea what it is.
Short story
1) 2/26/2011 Tom comes out of remission.. we start out in the mid 400s. I see pretty early on that he is good old Tommie, still very responsive to insulin. We leave the 400s quickly.
2) Tom produced nice numbers in mid cycle and then sharp "ends" around preshots, generally in the 300s. There were a few visits to real lows, and one to ~25 which of course got my attention. So far so good.
3) as everyone knows I am not tolerant of red or pink numbers, so I decided to try something I had read about: TID. The idea being that I would take the total 24 hr dose, and divide it into three shots instead of 2. Objective: I would get the curve flat by shooting through the highs, injecting at +8 when the slope rises, and once the whole curve was flatt-er, I would go back to BID. And guess what? it WORKED.
4) I believed then if I had a more consistent schedule, Tom might be regulated on TID (60-180) -- maybe even tightly (nothing over 120). But I wasn't concerned with that -- what I want is for him to re-experience normal levels as much as possible to re-set him. (I have this goofy theory that T2 diabetes is not physical (or "hardware") but an information disorder -- a "software" problem that over-writes endocrine memory and creates autoimmune system reactions.) But here's the thing. On TID I had been giving .6 or .65 every eight hours. When I went back to BID, I kept the dose the same and the numbers stayed the same. In other words he got 33% less insulin per 24 hours and produced the same BG readings, pretty much.
5) good things were starting to happen. For instance, the other night while I was feeling pleased about the transition back to BID, I completely missed the PM shot. By the time I was able to give it, it was +14 or +15. So rushing to get the insulin in (exhibiting my usual patient nature, with minor arm waving and shouting) I gave the full dose (.6) and THEN took his bg. Ooops. It was ~87.
6) there were a couple of other days recently where he had these nice overhangs down to the 50s and such, where shot had to be delayed, but now for the last few days there is a noticeable rise in the BG and he has been looking dragged down and listless. IN fact I thought he might be in hypo -- but he was in the 200s. I took him to my favorite vet, who presented me with the choice of either doing a blood panel or putting him on a course of antibiotics. I chose the latter, so now he is on his third day of Clavamox 62.5 mg BID.
So any thoughts on this? (Pamela: his liver issue -- remember the last time when the readings were marginally worrisome? -- has not been resolved... )
Many thanks,
Ilkka
*** PS word of explanation re my goofy theory, which I have been noodling about for six months or longer. There is I think a major revolution afoot in biology -- true, I may have been watching too much TEDMED, genomics and proteomics etc. and may be letting my job (involved in nanoscience and nano-bio) interfere (though I am not a doctor or a lab scientist). But in my own defense I just saw that there is new data coming out of Stanford, the U of Toronto and elsewhere that is, indeed, making it increasingly likely that Type 2 diabetes is going be reclassified from a metabolic disorder to an autoimmune disease along w Type 1. That would be huge. If it is an autoimmune disease it then is specifically involved in messaging, which I have been blathering about for a while -- i.e., not just about the physical condition of organs, but what the biology regulatory IT is telling those organs, which are now like smart switches on a network, to do. I.e., if there is pancreatic damage, it may be as much the result as the cause of the high BG and associated hormonal disorder. The endocrine systems that control BG are a "virtual organ," just like bone marrow is now considered an organ by some scientists. I've been looking at it from an endocrine-hormonal or homeostatic memory over-write angle -- thinking of "systems biology" (Dr. Craig Venter: "DNA is software that builds its own hardware").
I should give a word of preface because I have been off the reservation in terms of procedure, one of the reasons I did have not been posting "condos" -- did not want to confuse newbies and I don't have the energy to defend what I have been doing. In a word, there has been method, maybe even sound method, except my execution sucks. Ok so my judgment is not always the best either. But now something else is going on, and I have no idea what it is.
Short story
1) 2/26/2011 Tom comes out of remission.. we start out in the mid 400s. I see pretty early on that he is good old Tommie, still very responsive to insulin. We leave the 400s quickly.
2) Tom produced nice numbers in mid cycle and then sharp "ends" around preshots, generally in the 300s. There were a few visits to real lows, and one to ~25 which of course got my attention. So far so good.
3) as everyone knows I am not tolerant of red or pink numbers, so I decided to try something I had read about: TID. The idea being that I would take the total 24 hr dose, and divide it into three shots instead of 2. Objective: I would get the curve flat by shooting through the highs, injecting at +8 when the slope rises, and once the whole curve was flatt-er, I would go back to BID. And guess what? it WORKED.
4) I believed then if I had a more consistent schedule, Tom might be regulated on TID (60-180) -- maybe even tightly (nothing over 120). But I wasn't concerned with that -- what I want is for him to re-experience normal levels as much as possible to re-set him. (I have this goofy theory that T2 diabetes is not physical (or "hardware") but an information disorder -- a "software" problem that over-writes endocrine memory and creates autoimmune system reactions.) But here's the thing. On TID I had been giving .6 or .65 every eight hours. When I went back to BID, I kept the dose the same and the numbers stayed the same. In other words he got 33% less insulin per 24 hours and produced the same BG readings, pretty much.
5) good things were starting to happen. For instance, the other night while I was feeling pleased about the transition back to BID, I completely missed the PM shot. By the time I was able to give it, it was +14 or +15. So rushing to get the insulin in (exhibiting my usual patient nature, with minor arm waving and shouting) I gave the full dose (.6) and THEN took his bg. Ooops. It was ~87.
6) there were a couple of other days recently where he had these nice overhangs down to the 50s and such, where shot had to be delayed, but now for the last few days there is a noticeable rise in the BG and he has been looking dragged down and listless. IN fact I thought he might be in hypo -- but he was in the 200s. I took him to my favorite vet, who presented me with the choice of either doing a blood panel or putting him on a course of antibiotics. I chose the latter, so now he is on his third day of Clavamox 62.5 mg BID.
So any thoughts on this? (Pamela: his liver issue -- remember the last time when the readings were marginally worrisome? -- has not been resolved... )
Many thanks,
Ilkka
*** PS word of explanation re my goofy theory, which I have been noodling about for six months or longer. There is I think a major revolution afoot in biology -- true, I may have been watching too much TEDMED, genomics and proteomics etc. and may be letting my job (involved in nanoscience and nano-bio) interfere (though I am not a doctor or a lab scientist). But in my own defense I just saw that there is new data coming out of Stanford, the U of Toronto and elsewhere that is, indeed, making it increasingly likely that Type 2 diabetes is going be reclassified from a metabolic disorder to an autoimmune disease along w Type 1. That would be huge. If it is an autoimmune disease it then is specifically involved in messaging, which I have been blathering about for a while -- i.e., not just about the physical condition of organs, but what the biology regulatory IT is telling those organs, which are now like smart switches on a network, to do. I.e., if there is pancreatic damage, it may be as much the result as the cause of the high BG and associated hormonal disorder. The endocrine systems that control BG are a "virtual organ," just like bone marrow is now considered an organ by some scientists. I've been looking at it from an endocrine-hormonal or homeostatic memory over-write angle -- thinking of "systems biology" (Dr. Craig Venter: "DNA is software that builds its own hardware").
