What Happened to Hannah's Numbers, Today?

[Blamethecats and Hannah]

Could someone please take a look at Hannah's spreadsheet and give an opinion on what happened to her numbers, today? She had a nice, blue number... and then whammo. Will check in a few minutes to see where she is going. Expect it will be up, but then she is pretty unpredictable. Looks like tonight's shoot will be the usual 0.4 U. Does that sound reasonable?

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

I don't use ProZinc, so I don't have any practical experience with it, but I'll tell you what I see

You skipped last night, so that's going to effect the numbers some. Now ProZinc isn't dosed like Lantus, but the usual protocol I've seen used here either uses the same dose at AM and PM or there's a sliding scale used that says if they're at X number, they get Y amount of insulin

ProZinc does need to be given every 12 hours though, so we need to figure out either a dose that can be given every 12 hours that doesn't drop her below 50 or decide on a sliding scale for her that you can use

Can I ask where you came up with your dosing schedule? Usually, if a sliding scale is used, it's more like if they're 400+ they get A units, 300+ gets B, 200+ gets C and under 200 gets D

Stalling, while an important part of this dance does have one big problem that it looks like you ran into last night...while it's important that you not feed to see if the number comes up on it's own, if you stall TOO long, by not feeding the number keeps dropping until it's too low to shoot at all.

 

[Blamethecats and Hannah]

Thanks for replying, Chris & China. Hannah's dosing schedule came from her vet, following her going hypo, twice. Lately, it almost seemed to finally be working. For the previous two days, her numbers dropped later in the day and continued to drop. I didn't dare shoot, as didn't know if they would drop even more (below 200) and shooting might get her in to trouble. Also, thought maybe her pancreas was starting to help out a bit. There is no way to know and I am not a gambler... especially with my baby. Therefore, I opted for no insulin, even though I expected it might finally catch up with her, and today's numbers were likely just that. I also wondered if that 166 at +5 might have caused a bounce? I don't know enough about all of this to make any sense of it, as you can see.

I certainly can understand what you said about stalling:

Stalling, while an important part of this dance does have one big problem that it looks like you ran into last night...while it's important that you not feed to see if the number comes up on it's own, if you stall TOO long, by not feeding the number keeps dropping until it's too low to shoot at all.

That is exactly what happened, two nights in a row.

 

[Sue and Oliver (GA)]

I think she bounced. That blue was lower than she is used to, so her body released some extra glucose and she bounced up. The more of those she sees, the less she will bounce. At least your pmps was high enough to shoot! :mrgreen:

 

[Chris & China (GA)]

OK...again with the caveat that I'm not all that familiar with ProZinc, what we generally tell people is if your PMPS is too low to shoot, then you're giving too much insulin at AMPS

Maybe it would help to try the "consistent dosing" method instead of sliding scale with Hannah? Some cats do better with the same dose both AM and PM

What do you think about trying that? Maybe giving .5 in the morning and again at night?

We do recommend shooting anything above 200 though, although I understand your concern if you've had a hypo before, but the one of the big reasons we preach home testing so much is that as long as you're able to test at home, you're pretty much always going to be in control if Hannah were to drop too low.

Having high carb food choices in your "hypo kit" will allow you to bring her numbers up and keep her safe

 

[BJM]

You've been testing and shooting for about a month.
So long as the nadirs remain above 50 mg/dL, you may slowly reduce your no shot level. You might set it to 180 mg/dL for the coming week and see how that goes. If it is OK, then you might drop another 20 mg/dL to 160 mg/dL for another week or so. Finally, you may take it down to 150mg/dL.