dustyboy4 said:
When Dusty was first diagnosed with Diabetes he was taken off his dry food, cold turkey, and put on Purina DM pate. He started off eating 1 and 1/4 cans per day. For the 1st 6 months after diagnosis he was also put on Glipzide. We could not afford the insulin. He wasted away and that is our fault that we couldn't take care of him properly. His vets did not suggest us putting him down, we were told we will know when to do it. After those 6 months we finally made the decision to put him on insulin. The cost is still a struggle for us, but we love him and want to keep him around if we can. The only insulin the vets would put him on was the Prozinc. Since 2009 he has been eating Purina DM pate until earlier this year. Off and on he has had, I would say every 6 months or so, bouts of loose bowels. I also can't tell you how many times I have questioned the Purina DM causing these bouts with his bowels. No matter when he eats it you can hear his bowel sounds from across the room. Although he never acts like it hurts him the girgling that goes on makes me hurt for him. Several of those bouts of bowel problems he was put on Amoxicillian & FortiFlora for several days. It would solve the problem for a time just to come back a few months later. Dusty loves Amoxicillian. He would ingest the entire dropper full and eat it like it was candy. I questioned if there could be any type of sugar in it for him to like it that much and was told that there probably was sugar in it. I complained about this and the next bouts he had he was put on metronidazole and Fortiflora. The metronidazole was perfect. He would take his meds and his loose bowels would firm up and the gas rolling around in his belly would subside. Please don't get me wrong he has never been a flatulator, so until he pooped I guess the gas didn't come out. The problem he had with the metronidazole was that once the bottle of metronidazole was finished, usually a day or 2 afterward, Dusty would have what looked like cystitis or a UTI. He would go in and out of his boxes and dribble then go back and forth, back and forth. This symptom, once it began, would stop after about 4 to 5 hours and everything would be fine. He has been tested for a UTI before and it was negative. During all of this his BG was never regulated, it bounced and because of this he continued to have a ravenous appetite & heavy water drinking. I finally became fed up, I felt his vets wanted to keep giving him rounds of antibiotics and one actually wanted to keep him on them all the time. I felt this was not solving the problem and after reading several articles about gluten intolerance I personally took him off the Purina DM and started using Fancy Feast Classic Chicken Feast. I had read that this was one of the best low carb, gluten free cat foods, non-prescription, on the market. After 1 month on the Fancy Feast Classic Chicken Feast he had a sneezing problem. I took him to his vets, expecting an upper respiratory infection. Blood was taken and tested and he was given a shot of Convenia. The Convenia fixed him right up. The test results came in and they told me that he was anemic, he had an elevated white blood count showing he was trying to fight off some kind of infection and that his kidney function was slightly elevated but that could be due to being dehydrated. Right away after the shot of Convenia his symptoms cleared up but during this visit they wanted to know what he had been eating and I told them I had switched him to a gluten free diet. Neither vet liked my switch. I told them he did OK on this diet, no more bouts of loose bowels (when I say loose it was either soft serve or cow patty stage and he would put it all over the house probably trying to tell us his stomach was upset). The only problem with the Fancy Feast was that his stools, although formed, were extremely large around and although seemed normal solid looking for the inside, looked mucusy on the outside and terribly smelly. I guess this is what had me thinking he may have Mega Colon. Anyway, they had me take him off the Fancy Feast and put him on the Hill’s w/d for gastro problems. I was told the w/d had a higher fiber content than the DM. I was asked to watch his weight because the food was used for weight loss. Sure enough dusty lost a pound (that he couldn’t afford to lose). I reported this and he was taken off the w/d and put back on the Purina DM. I complained about the DM because of all the problems over the past 2.5 yrs. and was told I could still feed him 1 can a day for the fiber content. Dusty has had great bowel movements for several months now eating like this and his BG, although registering above 350 part of the day would also go down in the mid 150’s. Until recently. Recently, the vets, unbeknownst to them, sold me a case of the Purina DM savory select. After feeding him a few cans I was picking more DM up one day and asked them what happened to the pate’ version. The ladies doing the ordering told me that the savory select was all that they had recently been receiving from their supplier. I even remember commenting that Dusty really liked the savory select version. When they finally got a case of the pate’ in stock and I started feeding Dusty that instead of the savory select well he just don’t want to eat the pate’ anymore. When I put it down, he just looks at me and turns his nose up. . I tell you all Dusty has never, until now, turned his nose up at any food, including any crumb of people food. If someone accidently drops people food you have to pick it up fast and you have to fight Dusty off because he is there lickety split and his jaws will snap together trying to get at it. I really didn’t think too much about Dusty’s food types because his pooping had been doing good. I was convinced that the w/d gave him the fiber he needed to solidify his poop without the continual need for antibiotics. It has just been in the past (now) 17 + days where he began registering HI on his meter and hasn’t come down from the upper 500’s at all during this time period. After getting on the Lantus portion of the message board, now I find out the w/d is super high in carbs like 28% and the savory select is 10%. I just feel so stupid. And now we are in this mess. I am going to have to gradually switch Dusty back over to the Purina DM pate’ because he doesn’t want to eat it. I put some down late last night and he barely touched it. He kept waking me up wanting food and when I would get up and look, the pate’ was still in his dish. Just to ease my worry, I fed him ½ can of the savory select and left ½ can of the pate on his plate this morning in the hopes that he would eat it while I was at work and if (wishful thinking here) if his BG all of a sudden went low he would think to eat. When I got home he had eaten the pate’ but he still isn’t happy with this. I’m having to wean him off the savory select. I will probably give it a week and cut him off. I am praying the bowel problems don’t come back though.
So, Dusty is eating low carb wet food, is getting 5u BID and has yet to test under HI?
You also suspect Dusty may have megacolon. And the vet won't test for acromegaly?
What insulin were you giving at the 10u dose in May?
I had the same problem when I wanted my Shadoe tested... the vet office put it off and ignored me until I went in and said, you will draw for the tests or I will go to another vet.
They did not think she was acro.... she was female and petite and showed no signs for acro but did have a high dose of insulin. Her IGF-1 result was 120. The negative range is 12-92.
You look to have some mean resistance going on if all the numbers are HI. For the health of your cat, I think it's time to pick up some R insulin and move up the dosing a bit sooner than you have been.
Holding a dose for longer than 6 cycles max just allows the resistance to get a good hold.
I would up that dose to 6u and when you have your R insulin, someone here can help you get started on using it along with the Lantus. While you're at it, you may want to tell your vet that you want to switch to Levemir as it's a better insulin than Lantus when it comes to high doses, and human diabetics have stated that Lantus stings at higher doses.
When you are ready to start using R, you will need to be around to test every hour for 4 or 5 hours because you need to learn how sensitive your Dusty is to R. Some cats get a good drop in numbers from just a 0.5u dose of R but others barely budge with a dose of 1u or more of R.
For the diet, you can easily add more water to the food as well as 1/4tsp miralax to the am and pm meals .... it will help to soften the stool and have more frequent regular passings. My Oliver has megacolon and the miralax helps him along with all of his other meds to keep him regular.
If you switch to a raw diet, like Dr. Lisa's recipe, be sure to keep adding the miralax and more water to the recipe to help Dusty stay regular.
If the gluton-free foods made Dusty better, why worry about what the vets say about your switch? Do you want to switch back to the food they want and have Dusty with problems again? The vets don't like it? Tough, Dusty is better on gluten-free, then stick with it
And tell your vet you want the test for acromegaly.... you can get it from them or you can go to another vet office. I am sure they will want your money to stay at their office.
And careful with the Convenia; many have had issues with it. I think of it as the lazy man's AB.... people don't want to pill their cats or even give oral meds, so the vets just give this long lasting shot. Sadly, if your cat has a bad reaction on day 4 or something, you can't take the shot back; it's in the cat for the duration.
I don't know what to say about the peeing; my Shadoe began to have the same habit once she was diagnosed as diabetic, then as acro. She never changed, but she was better when I put a step for her in front of the box..... I think she held urine for long, then it bothered her to step in the box and have her belly rub on the edge of the box, so she just peed out front of the box. She was not like this at all before her diagnosis.
Since your vet has never heard of IAA, and not familiar with acromegaly, here are the 2 links with the info for the tests that you want done.
IAA Test
IGF-1 (Acro) Test
Gayle
