Wether or not to dose tonight

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LeighW

Member Since 2017
I have a 15 year old cat named Max who was diagnosed the end of August. He was on 1 unit Novalin N twice a day for the first month, and then was cut down to 1/2 a unit three weeks ago after his vet did a glucose curve. We changed his diet and got him off dry food completely since his diagnosis. Of course it's Sunday and my vet isn't available for advice on this. Max started having a somewhat vacant stare and sleeping a lot starting maybe Thursday. He is eating...that's never a problem for him. He spent all of last night getting us out of bed. He cried and cried all night until both of us got up and sat in the living room with him while he crawled back into his bed. The minute we went back into our bed he'd go in and get us up to sit with him again. He did this type of thing before he was diagnosed...that behavior and his weight loss clued us in that something wasn't right with him. I didn't dose him this morning and we ran out and bought a glucose monitor. I was finally able to get a glucose reading around 4:30 and it was 79. I opened a can of food at 10am, but free feed him wet food so I don't know really what time before that reading he last ate. I opened another can of food at 6:00pm and I've tried for the last two hours to get another glucose reading. It's not happening tonight. I just can't get a blood sample out of him. My question is It okay to hold off on dosing him tonight and call his vet in the morning? Will a whole day without insulin be a bad thing?
 
It's hard to say for sure without further readings, but from my own experience, it sounds like he may have gone hypo. Good call on not dosing this morning, and considering his symptoms and BG reading, I would skip tonight's dose as well. It's better your kitty's BG be high a day then too be too low for a minute. It's possible that the diet change may have drastically reduced his need for insulin. If so, that would be awesome! As far as getting a sample, it helped me in the beginning to warm the ear before trying to poke. I put some rice in a sock and heated it up for a few seconds. It seemed to work before he started bleeding better on his own. Take a break to give you both time to decompress, but maybe try that if you want to attempt getting a BG reading later.
 
Definitely skip. You may be having trouble getting a sample because the lancets that come with human meters are 31 gauge which are too thin. Get 28 gauge lancets and you will have an easier time.
 
Thank you so much for your help! Max went to the vet for a glucose curve today and he's in remission.
 
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