Duchess-plus-ungood

[cjsmith]

Glucose curve so far today: 428, 483, 490. I don't even have to run the rest of the curve to know her insulin dose is going up Very Soon Now.

Teeny tiny little additional clues: she's skinny, she drinks like a fish, and she soaks everything within a foot of the litterbox. This is her beleaguered system waving a giant glowing sign saying HELLO, HUMAN. THIS CAT HERE NEEDS SOME MEDICAL ATTENTION. WAKE UP.

(In her case, skinny is bad. A healthy weight does help keep kitty diabetes in check, but Duchess never gets skinny unless her diabetes jumps up and bites her. It does jump up, too. She'll drift into remission, but when she goes diabetic again it's quick. Weight loss is usually my first signal that she needs a glucose curve.)

Comments

[nosrednayduj]

When she misses the litter box you can dip a urine test strip in the puddle. I was always slightly pleased that Mottle had such bad aim. Made checking for coming out of remission painless for the cat.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty sure she's the only one who ever does that. I suppose if I snag a few urine test strips, I will soon be very sure. :-)

[portia.livejournal.com]

Poor Duchess. Does it take a toll on a cat to go up and down like that, as opposed to just getting insulin all of the time?

My sister and her vet tried for many months to find the right dose of insulin for her cat Gary (the white cat in my icon). Gary was a huge fat boy who dwindled down to skin and bones, eyes all sunken in, etc. He was so pitiful. They can't use the normal human insulin which is apparently much cheaper because it wasn't working for him. Now he is on 16 units of Vetsulin, which is supposedly an enormous dose. At least he is finally looking a little better but he'll never be the big, furry hairball that he used to be. :o(

I hope Duchess stabilizes quickly.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it takes a toll any time her sugars aren't under control, which happens every time her body changes & makes the dose wrong. She's a particularly unstable case, has been since she was diagnosed, and her life will probably be shortened because of it. (O'course, at 15 years and still functional, she's already had a good run. I can't complain.)

16 units does seem like a very big dose. I wonder whether that's a less insane dose for Vetsulin; maybe it varies a little bit with the kind of insulin. Duchess is using human insulin, a slow long-acting variant, and she's never been above 5 units 2x/day.

Thanks! I hope Gary gets stabilized too. That's the worst, when they're not stable and everybody has to keep rechecking everything.

[hnybny.livejournal.com]

Poor thing. I hope the upped dose helps.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! I'm sure it will. She's been a remarkably unstable diabetic for years. Cats can be wonky that way, but apparently Duchess is off the deep end. Every six months or so, sometimes quicker, her body does something weird and she needs a new level of insulin.

[leback.livejournal.com]

Poor Duchess. :-( I hope the increased insulin dose does the trick.

Skinny Jasmine is bad, too, because it's a sign either that her thyroid medicine isn't working, or that it's suppressing her appetite to the point that she's not eating. "Healthy weight" can have very different meanings, depending on the cat.

(Multiple cats also complicate the "What is healthy?" question. My vet would like me to put Misha on a diet, but that would require cutting off Jasmine's all-the-time-everywhere access to food, which is right now the only way I can get her to eat close to enough. Misha's a bit round, for sure, but her risk is certainly not high enough to merit further compromising Jasmine's health, or keeping either cat locked up all the time.)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Thanks! We'll probably be able to stabilize her dose over the next couple of months.

Multiple cats can definitely complicate the equation. I've got one in early-stage kidney failure and one diabetic, and the third really should have a hypoallergenic diet, but I don't have three locked rooms to feed them in. As it is, there's no all-the-time-everywhere access to food, and I suspect the reason Duchess got down to such a low dose of insulin is that she wasn't eating enough. But if I leave the diabetes food lying around, Little Girl will vacuum it up, sending her kidneys to an early grave.