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*Beth* · May 03, 2022, 09:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Que Sera Sera

ive tried for days to reply back to you but just kept rambling on & on all over the gamit of random thoughts about this subject. ttying to give some advice & heads ups & ideas & what to expect as time goes on ...
bottom line .. i wont try to have psysic powers to be telling you i absolutely know for a fact whats going on in your personal case right now so il just reflect back on what i had going on with me & my diabetic cat i guess to for some insight that might be of some help to you. my life right after we found out our cat was diabetic was a pure tsunami sized freaked out mess of mayhem which for me began with my meltdown at the vets office 15 seconds after i heard her say the work "diabetis". anyway .. i was an emotional wreck of panic & worried & upset & regret & sadness & hope & negativity & guilt & defiance & combativness & compassion & studious & a heap of 1000s of other things all running around in mind all at once to the point i was simply overwhelmed, exhausted & stressed out to the brink of colllapse.
which turns out was all absolutely just flat out stupid, dumb, uncalled for, unessary, illogical, overblown, farfetched, invalid, impossible, irrational, bs hogwash waste of time!
i wont sugar coat it here for you because this initial stage of this was a real doosey of one heck of rocky rough rollercoaster ride to have to go thru. dont worry you can do this everything is gonna be just fine. its probably gonna take a few months to get all the ins & outs & dosing etc figured out & dealt with to get everything in check and back under control so just try to breath & hang on and i promise you all this rigamoral here in the beginning is the worst part of it and once its overwith your cat & you will go back to the same old normal routine life as before all this started .. all thats gonna be different is her needing insulin shots & to get her numbers checked & every so often there will be some ups & downs in her numbers that take bit of tweeking to handle.
you asked about food ... the prescription diabetic food the vet suggested she go on didnt work in our case because we are a multi cat household & feeding her one type food while not letting her eat the food all the rest ate was simply not gonna work so we just kept on feeding her what she was eating already a mix of iams, proplan & purina one.
now that ive still managed to ramble on & on hopefull some of it might help you out some.

Thank you so much for sharing your experience!

Actually, Sidney was diagnosed in July 2021. So it's been a while. She was losing weight, terribly thirsty, insanely hungry, and peeing huge pees, frequently. When the vet called and told me Sid had diabetes I didn't think much of it, except to be thankful because I knew there was treatment for it.

I had NO idea of what was to come. The fear, guilt, fear, severe anxiety, fear, sleeplessness...did I say fear... Complete, utter exhaustion. And Sidney is a precious angel, never once has she resisted getting tested, shots...in fact, she somehow knows when it's time to get her glucose checked and she'll walk into the kitchen.

I do home test - I didn't for the first six months. Then I joined a support group and they strongly advised home testing. Sid's vet encouraged that, so after 2 curves at the vet's office I bought the supplies for testing and did curves at home and reported them to her vet.

I still wasn't doing regular testing until one afternoon, Sid looked odd...spacey. I had the idea to test her and sure enough, she was hypo. That scared me so much. I learned how to bring her up from hypo and after that I began regularly testing her, 4 times per day.

The food thing has been the toughest. I have 5 cats who had always free-fed. I stopped the free feeding and started doing scheduled feeding. Somehow, I managed that for some months until I realized I had to change something. Food changes, more food changes...we're still doing food adjustments right now. Everybody is getting a diabetic diet, but the very high protein/almost no carb kibble is giving a couple of them bad diarrhea. So they're all getting more wet food and we're switching over to a high protein but not quite as low carb dry for free feeding. Fingers crossed xx

The support group I'm in is in many ways very informative and helpful; in some ways they are fanatic. The admins advocate a wet only diet and anyone who feeds kibble is subtly or overtly judged. So I take what I find doable from that group.

We're still doing adjustments with dosage. 2 units Lantus worked great for months, then it seemed 2 was too high. So it was back to square 1. It's hard to avoid the bounces.

I started using a cat fountain 2 years ago and they love it! A wonderful thing to have around. I have regular dishes of water sitting in various places around my apartment. The bouillon idea is excellent!

Again - thank you so much for your input. I really appreciate it.