? Updated Info

[Shasta’s dad]

Have a cat that has diabetes and we’re struggling mightily. He had BG levels in the high 300s when he was diagnosed a few weeks ago. We were feeding him grain free Sheba wet and Iams dry weight control at that time. When we first started giving him Prozinc things looked good. .5 units got him to the mid 200s to the low 300s for the first few days. He is monitored with a Freestyle Libre. We actually got him into the 100s a few times with 1 unit after that by cutting back on his dry food. But we have not seen him below 270 since. The 14 day sensor expired last Saturday so we pulled that one off and put a new one on. At that time we also switched to Purina Pro plan set DM for a clean slate. What a nightmare it has been since then. He now is having allergic reactions to something. Not sure if it was the adhesive remover to pull off the Libre or the new food. He is scratching and licking all of his hair off and continues with a BG levels in the high 200s to 500+ (meter only reads hi after 500) where it has pegged several times. A second vet at the clinic did not want to change dosage until we got the new food going this last weekend. Now the poor guy is going to lick himself raw with the allergic reaction. My wife and I discussed putting him down because of the itching and the diabetes. Our vet who is wonderful, has a waiting list for appointments because she is really good but we haven’t had much luck with the others there. That means trying to talk with her or getting an appointment with her is a nightmare. Not sure where to turn. Lost a cat last year to diabetes with a different vet because they made it impossible to try to get blood level readings. Wish I would have seen your board then and learned how to take readings sooner. Any suggestions on where or how to begin anew? We’re losing it and would prefer not to lose him.

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

First thing I'd try is getting the new food out of the picture and go back to the Sheba wet food. If it's the pate type, it's perfect for a diabetic. None of the Iam's though

If the itching is due to something in the new food, it should improve if you get rid of it. (Also, there's absolutely nothing special in the D/M that treats diabetes in the first place. You're paying a premium price for a food with inferior grade ingredients and a well advertised name. The good news is it's 100% guaranteed so even opened you can return it. Most of us just told our vet that our cat wouldn't eat it)

 

[Shasta’s dad]

We’ll give that a try. I would think being uncomfortable itching would add to his high BG. Hoping to hear from the vet and upping his dosage to see if we can get his BG lower. Thanks!

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

I would think being uncomfortable itching would add to his high BG.

Absolutely! I sure hope getting him back to what he could eat before will make him feel better!

When you have a few minutes, read through this "How to help us help you" thread. There's some good information and links to the spreadsheet we use and instructions on doing your "Signature" etc. so that when you need help, we'll have that stuff out of the way.

 

[Ann & Sister]

We’ll give that a try. I would think being uncomfortable itching would add to his high BG. Hoping to hear from the vet and upping his dosage to see if we can get his BG lower. Thanks!

I second stopping the ProPlan DM. Too high in carbs and no magic ingredients. My new vet also prescribed that food and I had Sister on it for a few weeks. She loved it and so did all my other cats.

Regarding the possible itching. It may be behavioral. My cat, Cappy, will lick and chew until he creates a crusty sore and all the fur is gone. When he first did it last year, I found crusty sores on his abdomen that he was licking. I thought it might be ringworm. Booked an appointment and on the day we were to see the vet, the sores had disappeared. Then last month, Cappy was "working on" a new area on his back leg which is healing now. I have equated these episodes with his stress over seeing squirrels in the tree outside the window. Their appearance will also make him run around like he's being chased. And he will stop and start the licking and chewing. Just throwing that out there.

White getting a vet appointment is still challenging right now, you can probably get a vet tech appointment to just get a quick blood test. I did that with my first diabetic kitty once a week, back when I had no idea you could test at home. There was a minimal charge so I think it was just an ear poke.
Hugs,

 

[Shasta’s dad]

Thanks everyone. We will work on getting all the info together over the weekend and repost then. We did have success for the first time taking a BG reading with the Relion unit. Libre was higher by about 18 but at least I know it’s in the ballpark and it’s not an artificial reading high.

 

[Shasta’s dad]

OK I uploaded Shasta's Curves. Again they are taken using a FreeStyle Libre device. We're on our fourth one as he just tore the third one off this AM. As you can see from the curves there is no consistency whatsoever. We adjusted food a couple of times. Shasta weighs about 15 lbs after losing a few pounds, he was close to 18 lbs, which is what tipped us off that something was up, along with his water consumption and soaked box. Originally he ate IAMS weight control along with some grain free mixed then a half serving of Sheba twice a day. He is a kibble kind of cat. When he was diagnosed the plan was to put a Libre on him get his reading and then adjust the insulin as needed. The first week was good with 1 unit of Prozinc. He dropped immediately into the 150 and below range with that diet. We even adjusted his Prozinc to .5 units as day three he got into the low 60s on the Libre system. Those numbers are no where to be found because we changed which phone communicates with the Vet office which removed the info from the other phone. Somewhere I read that weight control food is not good for a Diabetic cat so we switched form the weight control IAMs to the Chicken IAMs along with the Sheba. He seemed starved every time we fed him. We ordered Purina ProPlan DM and Hills MD when the suggested we put him on a Diabetic diet. Since then we've lost all control. He developed some type of allergic reaction, as mentioned on the my original post and has chewed a bunch of his fur off. Not sure what it was from but my guess is the food. He had a shot to help with that. We switched away from all hard food and went to 2 servings of Sheba. He just does not want to eat all of that food but comes back a few hours later. So we added a little grain free kibble back in. As you can see from his numbers he is everywhere in the curve. The other night when my wife scanned him at 6:00 before feeding him he was below 70 and got into the 60s. She did not give him a shot at all that night. I was on the road and she was stressing to the point where she could not sleep. She feed him all sorts of food and with no shot that put him right back into the mid to high 400s and high 300s. We did not recover from that until the past day or two. But if you look at his chart he goes from the 400's to mid 100's with no consistency. This AM he dropped 290 points in BG level (392 to 102) in a couple hours. We're afraid to think what happens when we take the Libre off. If she gave him insulin when he was low the other night with me out of town he certainly would have crashed. The Vet said she would monitor the Libre and we would make a plan. After the Libre change we don't hear from them much. I know they have other patients but we're totally lost. They seem to be frustrated with the food changes even thought we've discussed them several time. We struggle getting blood with a lance from him. We have to stick him 4-5 time before we get blood and the way we're doing it you can see that it hurts him. We had hoped that 5 weeks into this we would have a much better feel for what to do, but again we're lost. I was thinking about getting some Wysong Epigen 90 kibbles to give with both the Sheba and the Fancy Feast but struggling to get his BG even close to being regulated that would seem like one more variable. We don't know enough about diabetes having watched a 21 lb tabby shrivel to less than 6 lbs about 1.5 years ago. We don't want to see that happen again so we're hoping someone may have some suggestions.