More history of Kitty and his feline diabetes

As part of my blog, I am trying record of what is happening with my cat, Kitty. Kitty is a 15 year old tabby, weighing in at 23 pounds. As I mentioned before, he was first diagnosed with feline diabetes back in January of 2o01 but "snapped out of it" (so to speak) by June 2001.

Fast forward to Octiber 2005, and his diabetes is back!! We started on the animal insuln, Caninsulin which proved to be a disaster. On January 18th, 2006, we switched to a human insulin called Lantus. It is a long lasting insulin, which has shown much promise in studies to be good for cats. One of the biggest problems with administering insulin is that there is no insulin out there that is EXACTLY LIKE FELINE INSULIN. Often, cats do not respond well or at all. Even when they do respond, their bodies need time to get used to this new insulin and figure out how to use it. Therefore, each dose should be allowed to settle for at least 7 days.

We started at a conservative dose of 2.5U Lantus, twice a day (also known as BID). The vet wanted us to start at 5U BID, but I have seen Kitty's numbers crash and really wanted to be careful. We stayed on this dose for approximately 2 weeks, but saw no real improvement. We then increased to 3.5, 4.5 and finally, as of last Tuesday, we are at 5U BID. One issue we have noticed is that Kitty is getting serious neuropathy in his back legs. It is caused by nerve damage due to high blood glucose levels.

I test Kitty's blood glucose before every shot. Normally, his numbers are very high (26, 30 etc). A normal range is 4-8 mmol/dl. Last Wednesday, his preshot was 15. I gave him his full dose and watched as his sugars dropped to 2.9 before they started to climb back up. Usually, the climb up much higher. This is possibly an instance of symogi or rebound (more on rebound later). His next preshot was 23.9.

Thursday night, his preshot was 9.3 mmol/dl!!! He was playing with the laser pointer and being very "himself". In this instance, the best thing to do is to feed and test again in an hour. Well, an hour later, he was at 5.4! By 3 hours past his normal shot time, he was only back up to 8 and 8 hours after, we was only back up to 17. By the next morning, he was at 28.9 and we have not been able to move that much.

Hopefully, we can straighten this out a bit better this weekend.