What happened to Tisha's numbers??!

[Tisha's_Person]

I am so confused. Tisha was not feeling well on Friday and we were supposed to do a BG curve for the vet. She was too low to get her shot Friday morning, so we postponed to Monday. Since she has pretty consistently been too low to get 2 shots in a row, we decided not to give her the Sunday evening shot so that we could do a BG curve on Monday morning. That made 2 missed shots in a row since she was too low to get a Sunday morning shot.

I am confused because her curve shows higher numbers than she did on the higher dose of Lantus 2 weeks ago, the cycle is really weird, after 2 straight weeks of consistently being too low for a second shot, she needed a second shot yesterday, then her BG numbers actually went UP 2 hours after the 2nd shot. Can anyone explain this to me?

I am at work, so I can't access google drive to update the last few readings. We did re-test about 20 minutes after that 207 number since it just seemed off. +2 was done at 10:30 PM. At 10:44 PM (+2.25), she read at 189 instead of 207. At +5, she was at 199. AMPS this morning was 213. Technology geek that I am, I did graph the 3 BG curves to see the difference and it's clear that this just reacted completely differently in her body. I've attached it in case anyone is curious.

I'm just baffled by this. It seems so inconsistent with the readings we were getting before Monday. Did I mess it up by skipping the shot Sunday night? Is this because she wasn't feeling well Thursday night/Friday morning and it threw her system off?

Also, I noticed that she has a hard knot in one of her ears that I assume is from a BG prick. It doesn't look infected, but she gets really mad at me if I get close to it.

Thanks!

 

[Larry and Kitties]

Lantus is a depot insulin. It takes a few days for a dose to build up in the body for full effect. When you skip a shot or two the depot get partially depleted and yo have to do a couple of cycles for depot to refill. Thus what you are seeing is not unexpected.
I myself would reduce the dose from 1 to 3/4 so you can dose every 12 hours.

 

[Tisha's_Person]

I agree that she needs a dose reduction. The vet seems to be leaning towards giving her 1 unit once per day. I'm going to see if I can talk her into .5 units BID instead and see how she does on that. It seems like she gets too low,then too high with the 1 unit dosing. If the vet doesn't agree, then I guess I will have to decide if I'm going to do it anyway.

 

[BJM]

You hold the syringe regardless of what your vet tells you to do.
And by tracking the glucose values, you can show better control.

 

[Shelly & Jersey (GA)]

Hi Lisa,

I'm not a dosing advisor, so I can't help you with specific dosing guidance. I do know that Lantus likes consistency, though. If you can find a dose that can safely be given twice a day, I think you'll find more consistency with the numbers. Lantus lasts about 12 hours, so if you're only giving Tisha one shot a day, she has insulin helping her for about 12 hours and then she's "on her own" for about 12 hours. That can result in higher numbers.

we decided not to give her the Sunday evening shot so that we could do a BG curve on Monday morning.

You definitely don't have to skip a shot to do a bg curve. I rarely did full curves, but I did lots of spot checks. I always tested Jersey before her shots so I would know if it was safe (well, safer) to give the shot. I would then get some checks in at various times throughout the day. Getting those in-between checks each day was really helpful because it let me see how well the insulin was working and whether or not I needed to change the dose. Getting some evening tests in was also really important to me since Jersey would often go lower at night (as a lot of kitties do).

Anyway....those are just a few thoughts I had!
Shelly