Diabetes Treatment

As soon as my vet mentioned the
number "363" today on the phone, I asked
him the units on this.

It depends on the type and strength of insulin and there is *no*
standard dose for a particular glucose number. Every cat is different
and has different insulin needs. If you use u-40 strength it's going to
be different from u-100, The humulin insulins are usually u-100 and
generally for the number you started with it is wise to start out with
1-2 units. Even then, it can take time for a dose to settle (a week is
average) and numbers can come down over that time so it's very important
to monitor glucose. It also depends on what your feedin your cat,
ideally, twice daily scheduled, measured meals of a low carb *canned*
food 12 hours apart is going to be the best course of action to get your
cat regulated. Carb content makes a big difference and it is important
to do the first curve and insulin dose based on the new diet. Feeding
dry food and then switching to canned can dramatically decrease insulin
needs and if the insulin dose remains the same you could kill your cat.
I recommmend a few flavors of Wellness canned food for diabetic cats.

For insulin, I would use PZI, which commonly comes as u-40, hwich means
that it takes 2.5 units to = 1 unit of regular u-100 insulin. There are
specific needles for each strength and it is VERY important to pay
attention to which ones you are buying so you don't accidentally OD your
cat. To further confuse you ;-) I have a client that uses u-100 needles
for her u-40 PZI. The reason for this is that her cat is very sensitive
and it took awhile for us to get him regulated. Even small, normally
used increases could dramatically change his numbers. By using the u-100
needles we were able to really micromanage his dose and tweak it a very
tiny amount as 2.5 units on the u-100 needle would only = 1 unit for the
u-40 insulin.

Megan



"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."

-Edmund Burke

Learn The TRUTH About Declawing
http://www.stopdeclaw.com

Zuzu's Cats Photo Album:
http://www.PictureTrail.com/zuzu22

"Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one
elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and
splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then
providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and
material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his
way."

- W.H. Murray

I don't like to judge someone when they obviously love their cat and
think they did the best thing, but having had a diabetic cat for two
years -- this one I don't understand.

I think you needed help finding a better way to do it, something less
stressful on all of you. I had to work with a little mind control on our
cat, because we were both so nervous. He growled and bit me at first,
but I knew it was the insulin or death for him. I tried different things
until we got it down. I don't think the needle hurts them that much, but
they can build scary thoughts in their minds, just like we do. I also
know that our cat was very aware of my own nervousness.

I wish you could have found help.

Rhonda

wrote:

Chasing her down, cornering her, and
having one person hold her down while
the other stuck a needle in her, while she
was growling and struggling - that was
unconscionable stress to put on an elderly
cat, in my opinion.


There are plenty of ways to get a cat to take insulin without resorting
to the above. Regardless, causing her to suffer and die a miserable
death from the subsequent ketoacidosis and acute renal failure that is a
result of withholding insulin is cruel and abusive, plain and simple. It
doesn't matter what you did before.

Megan



"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing."

-Edmund Burke

Learn The TRUTH About Declawing
http://www.stopdeclaw.com

Zuzu's Cats Photo Album:
http://www.PictureTrail.com/zuzu22

"Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one
elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and
splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then
providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision,
raising in one's favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and
material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his
way."

- W.H. Murray

Hi Elle,

We had a cat, Bob, diagnosed with diabetes about 3 years ago. Our vet at
the time said a diabetic cat lives an average of 2 years after
diagnosis, and that proved true for our cat. He died though of cancer,
so I think he could have lived many more years with just diabetes.

As for cost of diabetes, it wasn't horrible until he had the
pancreatitus complications. We did feed him special food (Purina DM,)
the insulin was about $30 a bottle and lasted for months, and the
syringes were not that expensive. You can sometimes get home blood
glucose monitors for free or nearly free, because the company wants you
to buy their test strips.

There is a WONDERFUL message board on www.felinediabetes.com. Those
people have cats who have had diabetes for years and years. They know
the ins and outs and can answer most any question. They also never
sleep, you can post an emergency at 2am and usually someone answers!

Good luck with your cat. I hope you have many wonderful years with him.

Rhonda

Elle wrote:

My 7.5 year old cat has just been diagnosed with diabetes. Per my discussion
with his vet, I will likely start on him on some potassium today and then
decide on insulin injections and routine blood sugar testing to ultimately
get the insulin dosage right.

Can people hear please share your experiences with treating a cat with
diabetes? In particular:

Did you give the injections yourself? Did the cat become more cooperative
with time?

What sort of costs will be incurred if I treat this?

How long did your diabetic cat live after beginning treatment?

I will be googling for more information, but any responses here would be
much appreciated.

Thank you.

Thanks for sharing your experiences, Rhonda, especially about costs I might
expect.

"Rhonda" wrote
Hi Elle,

We had a cat, Bob, diagnosed with diabetes about 3 years ago. Our vet at
the time said a diabetic cat lives an average of 2 years after
diagnosis, and that proved true for our cat. He died though of cancer,
so I think he could have lived many more years with just diabetes.

As for cost of diabetes, it wasn't horrible until he had the
pancreatitus complications. We did feed him special food (Purina DM,)
the insulin was about $30 a bottle and lasted for months, and the
syringes were not that expensive. You can sometimes get home blood
glucose monitors for free or nearly free, because the company wants you
to buy their test strips.

There is a WONDERFUL message board on www.felinediabetes.com. Those
people have cats who have had diabetes for years and years. They know
the ins and outs and can answer most any question. They also never
sleep, you can post an emergency at 2am and usually someone answers!

Good luck with your cat. I hope you have many wonderful years with him.

Rhonda

"Elle" wrote in message
ink.net...
My 7.5 year old cat has just been diagnosed with diabetes. Per my
discussion
with his vet, I will likely start on him on some potassium today and then
decide on insulin injections and routine blood sugar testing to ultimately
get the insulin dosage right.

Can people hear please share your experiences with treating a cat with
diabetes? In particular:

Did you give the injections yourself? Did the cat become more cooperative
with time?

What sort of costs will be incurred if I treat this?

How long did your diabetic cat live after beginning treatment?

I will be googling for more information, but any responses here would be
much appreciated.

Thank you.

My cat has diabetes and has had it now for a couple of years (he's 15). He
also has a kidney complaint which I give him a tablet for each day. I give
him the injections myself, at feeding time, and he doesn't flinch at all
(you do it on the fleshy part of their back where their mother would have
picked them up by). The needles are so tiny it's quite hard to see the
dosage if you have bad eyesight but it doesn't hurt the cat at all, I find
it's best to do it when he's eating (he's a pig!) so he's distracted. I
promise you that once you've done the first one (and got over your nerves)
it's really easy. If course the hard part is convincing your usual cat
minder that it's easy when you have to go away! My cat had insurance, so
they covered it for the first year, but (I'm in England) it costs about £30
for the insulin, which lasts about 3 months in the fridge, and you have to
pay for the syringes and sharps box. I have been told that some diabetic
cats can live to be about 20, so I'm hoping my baby lasts a while longer.
Since he began his treatment he has been a changed cat, up to his old
tricks. He has had the odd minor hypo (I thought it was hiccups) and I have
been told to rub a small amount of honey round his gums if it happens again.
I hope this helps, you can email me direct if I can tell you anything else.

Good luck!

"Masha" wrote "Elle"
My cat has diabetes and has had it now for a couple of years (he's 15).
He
also has a kidney complaint which I give him a tablet for each day. I
give
him the injections myself, at feeding time, and he doesn't flinch at all
(you do it on the fleshy part of their back where their mother would have
picked them up by). The needles are so tiny it's quite hard to see the
dosage if you have bad eyesight but it doesn't hurt the cat at all, I find
it's best to do it when he's eating (he's a pig!) so he's distracted. I
promise you that once you've done the first one (and got over your nerves)
it's really easy. If course the hard part is convincing your usual cat
minder that it's easy when you have to go away! My cat had insurance, so
they covered it for the first year, but (I'm in England) it costs about
£30
for the insulin, which lasts about 3 months in the fridge, and you have to
pay for the syringes and sharps box. I have been told that some diabetic
cats can live to be about 20, so I'm hoping my baby lasts a while longer.
Since he began his treatment he has been a changed cat, up to his old
tricks. He has had the odd minor hypo (I thought it was hiccups) and I
have
been told to rub a small amount of honey round his gums if it happens
again.
I hope this helps, you can email me direct if I can tell you anything
else.

Good luck!

Thanks, Masha. The vet this morning gave me a similar tip about the honey
(or Karo corn syrup).

Update:
My cat received his first insulin shot about 1.5 hours ago. He has become
progressively worse since Monday. I am not optimistic. The next four hours
(when in theory a correct dose of insulin should have kicked in) will tell a
lot more. Then the next day, if he makes it.

I do not know why the vet did not prioritize getting insulin into him; I am
certain Zuzu is right about this. I think I should have been more aggressive
yesterday afternoon with the vet when I realized I would really prefer he
start on the insulin right away. I let his rude assistant push me around.

On the other hand, I could have moved quicker.

The cat is in a shallow box next to my desk now, on a pillow and towel and
surrounded by an old T-shirt and some rags. I think he's breathing better
than an hour and a half ago. He repositioned himself somewhat a few minutes
ago.

I dug into the web sites people provided and maybe one or two more I found
googling. They're excellent. I had a concise and efficient but intelligent
discussion with the vet this morning. About the blood monitoring, I told
him, "With all due respect, sir, I plan to do this at home. I already have
the glucometer I plan to buy picked out." He was great about this and said I
could all in the numbers and he would help me to adjust the insulin dosage
(though I think I have a good handle on how to do this at this point). He
does seem to have a lot of experience with treating diabetics, including
training his wife to treat their diabetic cat (injections and all), who then
lived many years more. I avoided the rude assistant.

Uup, he just lifted his head big time and is now trying to get out of the
box!

Back to my cat.

"Elle" wrote in message
news
363.

Hyperglycemia in the range of 300 to 400 mg/dl also occurs in cats that are
stressed by the trip to the vet. Did your vet check his urine for sugar
(glycosuria)? Cats with stress hyperglycemia usually do not have
glycosuria.

Serum fructosamine test also distinguishes diabetes from stress
hyperglycemia and will also provide an index of his average blood glucose
concentration over the last few weeks. SF is inexpensive and only requires
a simple blood test.

If he's truly diabetic, 363 mg/dl isn't that bad at all! ;-) His diabetes
should be very easy to control. You might be able to get his BG down to the
normal range with dietary therapy alone. Speak to your vet about a low
carbohydrate/high protein diet such as *canned* kitten food. I've
successfully weaned several diabetic off insulin by feeding them low
carbohydrate diets - some had initial BG concentrations much higher than
your cat's.



He has all the symptoms as well: weight loss,

He's losing weight because insulin deficiency causes decreased tissue
utilization of glucose, amino acids, and fatty acids. So, he's actually
starving even though he's eating like a pig. He probably always seems
hungry because little or no glucose is getting into the the cells of the
'satiety center' in the hypothalamus - which directly affects the feeling of
hunger. The amount of glucose that gets into the cells in the satiety
center is controlled by insulin. So, even though he probably eats like pig,
he still always feels hungry and continues to lose weight. Once his
diabetes is under control, he should start to gain weight back because his
body will be able to use protein and fat efficiently. His appetite should
also return to normal.


hair clump loss, drinking a
lot of water, urinating more than when he was younger,

Glycosuria (sugar in the urine) creates an osmotic diuresis which causes
polyuria (increased urination). The body compensates for the increased
water loses with polydipsia (increased drinking) to prevent dehydration.
IOW, he's not urinating more because he's drinking more, he's drinking more
because he's urinating more! PU/PD should also resolve once he's regulated.


weak back legs.


Rear leg weakness in diabetic cats is usually the result of 'diabetic
neuropathy'. DN is usually caused by long-standing uncontrolled diabetes.
Potassium depletion from polyuria may also be a contributing factor.
Regulating his diabetes and potassium supplementation should (hopefully)
resolve the problem.





The cat was anesthesized when the blood was taken. Not that this
guarantees
normal blood levels.

Stress hyperglycemia can persist for hours after the stessor has been
removed. Thus, anesthesia probably had little if any effect on his BG.


Urine dipsticks are only good for checking keytones - not as an indication
of blood glucose. Cats have a high renal threshold for glucose - could be
as high as 250-290 mg/dl. Thus, a cat that tests negative for UG might
still be hyperglycemic and may lead to erroneously reducing or skipping an
insulin treatment -- which would initiate a disastrous sequence of events.

Another serious limitation of dipsticks is they cannot detect hypOglycemia.
The lowest they go is 'negative'.

But the most serious limitation of dipsticks is their inability to read
present UG at the time of testing. The urine in the bladder at any given
time may be an accumulation of many hours of urine production. IOW,
dipsticks can't distinguish postprandial spikes of a few hours earlier from
present UG. This can lead to erroneously increasing the insulin dose.
*Never* make adjustments in insulin dosages based on dipstick readings and
without consulting your vet.

Home blood glucose monitoring is absolutely *essential*. You can watch a
video on how to check a cat's blood glucose on my site:

http://www.maxshouse.com/bgtest%5B1%5D.mpg

http://www.maxshouse.com/bgtest.rm
..
Once you get the hang of BG testing, you can plot your own glucose curves at
home -- which are always more accurate than curves plotted in a vet's
clinic. Plotting a curves involves little more than checking your cat's BG
every 2-3 hours for one day.

A word of caution: If you switch your cat to a low carbohydrate diet,
you'll need to plot another glucose curve because his insulin requirements
will be less -- or quite possibly *none*. In fact, you might want to speak
to your vet about a low carbohydrate diet before beginning insulin therapy.

From your post, I don't think you'll have much of a problem regulating and
keeping your cat regulated.

Best of luck,

Phil.

"Elle" wrote
Back to my cat.

I signed off before sending the above to post.

My cat died 20 minutes later.

"fatbak" wrote in message
. ..
I sympathize, Elle. I had an elderly diabetic cat several years ago.


Did you give the injections yourself? Did the cat become more
cooperative
with time?

Yes and not really. She was always a grouchy cat anyhow. She tolerated
the twice-a-day injections, but when she let us know she didn't want
them anymore (got up and walked away when she saw us coming with the
needle), we stopped them. She lived about a week after that.


Let me get this straight: You let your cat die because she didn't want her
insulin injections? What's wrong with you?

Oh dear (((( I'm sooooo sorry


"Elle" wrote in message
ink.net...
"Elle" wrote
Back to my cat.

I signed off before sending the above to post.

My cat died 20 minutes later.