Albert

[paulpomes]

Two months ago I performed a dental cleaning with extractions on Albert, my 14-yo tuxedo male cat who has diabetes. The preoperative blood work was normal except his blood glucose (BG) was over 280 mg/dl (normal range 80-150). This had a number of possibly overlapping explanations: stress glucose release from body stores, the half-dose of insulin

Comments

[otterdoc]

Would the goal of switching to canned be to get him off insulin altogether? You've got pretty damned good control with the dry food and a little glargine, so I might be inclined to just leave it be. However, I can totally understand wanting to take him off the insulin if possible.

Nice work!! I really suck at dealing with diabetics. NOT my favorite disease by far.

-M.

[paulpomes]

I'd like to get him off insulin but I won't let the best be the enemy of the good enough. If he still won't touch wet food in a month or so I'll leave well enough alone.

I'm convinced that only home monitoring of feline diabetics will give believable BG readings. It's a lost cause teaching that to most people so I make do with fructosamine, occasional in-hospital BG curves, and crossed fingers.

[otterdoc]

Whew, okay, so maybe I'm not the quack I thought I was with diabetics. ;) I've had similar experiences with our diabetic cats here.

Still, you've done great things for this cat.

-M.

[macula_densa]

I don't know whether you've ever run across this site before, but I like some of her tips. Don't be appalled by the home-made raw diet recipe she has on there if you're anti-raw (I pretty much am). If you look closely at it you'll realize it's actually quite good, but probably not realistic for your average owner.

http://www.catinfo.org/#Transitioning_Dry_Food_Addicts_to_Canned_Food_