Hi Sue!
I wanted to explain a little about what you've got going on with Frankie. He has "bounced" from the blues and greens on Sunday. A bounce can last up to 3 days or so, and in a cat that isn't used to being in normal numbers (those greens and blue numbers), it surely will take the entire 3 days.
What is important here is that these high numbers yesterday & today do not mean that he needed more insulin. The 5u that was working before was when he was eating dry food. There is a HUGE difference between how much insulin a cat needs when eating dry food compared to how much they need when they are eating low carb canned food. One of our kitties here in Lantus/Lev Land went from 5.5u to off of insulin when the dry food was removed. The little bit of dry food Scooter was sneaking caused him to need 5.5u of insulin per shot. That's a powerful carb-effect. You've changed the situation when you removed the dry food and it's important that the insulin also change.
There are 3 occasions when high numbers do not mean that a cat needs more insulin:
1. If a cat's dose is too high, they might have constant high blood sugar
2. If a cat's dose has just been increased, their body might respond with higher numbers for the following day or two after a dose increase.
3. If a cat's blood sugar either drops into a range it's not used to (which could be 200 if a cat is used to 400), or if the blood sugar drops too quickly (depending on the cat, might be 50 points an hour or more) then the body perceives it as a hypo and responds by releasing counter-regulatory hormones and stored sugars to raise the blood sugar. The result is high numbers.
Please read
this explanation here so you understand this a bit better. It's counter-intuitive, but it is the way feline diabetes works.
If you count forward 3 days from Sunday, that means that he might still be high until tomorrow sometime.
I would encourage you to reduce his dose back to 3 or 4u in the morning and to keep it there. It's counter-intuitive, but truly, I think you will see sometime tomorrow he will clear this bounce out of his system and his blood sugar will drop back into blue/green numbers. You don't want him overdosed when this happens.
With Lantus & Lev, you don't increase the dose based upon high numbers in one cycle. We look at the previous 3 days' tests to determine what's going on. Until new members get the hang of things, we encourage people to ask for help evaluating blood sugar before raising the dose. It's for Frankie's safety.
Please ask if this doesn't make sense because it is pretty important to understand.
