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Old May 24th, 2010, 02:34 PM
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sugarcatmom sugarcatmom is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rjesak View Post
According to the vet, she's put Jessie on a very low dose (1 1/2 units twice daily) of ProZinc insulin.
ProZinc is a good choice. It's fairly new and was set to replace the discontinued Idexx PZI, which many cats have done well on.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rjesak View Post
She does NOT recommend checking the blood sugar - she says it's usually unnecessary...
Vets usually say this for one or more of the following reasons:

1) they don't want to lose the income of the client having to bring their pet in for testing,

2) they don't actually know anything about home-testing, like how to do it or how essential a tool it is in the management of diabetes,

3) they have a patronizing attitude towards their clients and don't want them taking control of their pet's care, or making dosing decisions without their input.

4) the vet doesn't want to overwhelm the owner of a newly diagnosed pet with too much information and risk the owner euthanizing the animal instead of treating it.

The fact is that diabetes is a home-managed condition. There is no better tool, whether for humans or pets, in managing diabetes than to be able to test what the bg levels are at any given time. To know if it's safe to give the insulin in the first place is crucial, especially given that cats can go into remission at any time. Would your mom give a diabetic child a shot without knowing what it's bg was first? Why would that be any different for her cat? In fact I would argue that it's even more important, because the cat can't tell anyone if they're feeling weird or sleepy or whatever. All we have to go on to decide if it's safe to give that insulin shot is what the bg levels are at.

Your mom does not need the vet's permission to test her cat. There's lots of info on the internet on how to do it, and while the learning curve can be a tad steep in some cases, it's absolutely doable. 1000's of us have learned how to do it without help from our vets. Please print this out for your mom to read: http://www.catinfo.org/felinediabete...ose_Monitoring

And some more info worth reading: http://www.felinediabetes.com/phorum...182#msg-779182
http://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=287


Quote:
Originally Posted by rjesak View Post
If Jessie eats, then give him the full dose (1 1/2 units). If he doesn't eat, give him 1 unit. Give him 1 1/2 units in the evening regardless.
That is crazy! There is no way she should be giving her cat insulin when it doesn't eat if she doesn't know what the blood glucose value is. That's a recipe for hypoglycemia. You might want to print out this info for her as well while you're at it, cause if she insists on following the advice of this vet, she's going to need it: http://felinediabetes.com/FDMB/viewt...hp?f=14&t=1122

Quote:
Originally Posted by rjesak View Post
Mom is supposed to bring him back in for a full blood workup in a few weeks.
Does that include a curve? A fructosamine? How does the vet plan to monitor whether the dose of insulin is appropriate or not? One single blood glucose test at the vet, when the cat is possibly experiencing stress-induced hyperglycemia, is useless in the big picture.

Quote:
Originally Posted by rjesak View Post
Mom is like I was (only more stubborn) and is sure that the vet knows best.
Not this vet. Sure, if your mom wants to give her cat 2 shots a day, every day, for the rest of her cat's life (however long that may or may not be if she isn't going to home-test), then by all means, tell her not to change a thing. But if she wants to have any hope at all of her cat being diet-controlled and not needing exogenous insulin, then she really must change to a low-carb wet food. There is no other way. Can you print this out and give it to her: http://www.catinfo.org/felinediabetes.htm Maybe the fact that it's written by a vet (one with more experience than her own vet clearly has) might make a difference.
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