Our Max

Our newest pic of Max, laying on his towel on the bathroom floor where he spends most of his time these days. Yesterday morning we had our first diabetes emergency: Max hypoed. What that means is that his blood glucose levels were coming down and he registered a fairly low-though still not 'normal' BG before his insulin shot so I gave him a slightly reduced dose. A little later his BG number dropped below normal into the danger zone. See, diabetic cats are diagnosed as having abnormally high BG levels (hyperglycemic) because their cells are not taking in the glucose they need and this results in organ damage over time. So they're given insulin to bring those numbers down but insulin works very well and if their number drops too low (hypoglycemic) they can have seizures and die. Max did not have any seizures nor did he die as I have been researching feline diabetes a ton and so knew what to do. We gave him honey and extra food continuously-we also had the support of the Feline Diabetes Message board which has diabetic cat owners on from all over day and night to give advice when needed and just to generally support each other in their time of need as taking care of a diabetic, especially one that can't "tell" you how they're feeling is a very stressful and trying experience. These people totally talked us through Max's hypo episode which lasted hours and was very scary. He is fine now though his numbers are a little higher than they have been this past week from all the extra food he ate yesterday (including the big no no for diabetic cats: dry food-high in glucose and can assist in bringing the cat out of the hypo episode). We've gone back to square one at the advice of the good people on the FDMB. He will now get 1 IU of insulin at shot time (1/3 of the usual dose) and more food at shot time and less food at snack. Finding the right balance to fix his BG is called the "sugardance". We danced like mad yesterday. And our vet is away in Florida (going to diabetes conferences and such!) and we have no er clinic here for our pets so we managed a full out emergency by ourselves and got through it just fine. Good for us.

I promise not to make this a web site about Max's diabetes but it's a load off to share our journey with others. Thanks for listening. And for those of you who have cats that you cherish as we do please, please here this: dry cat food is killing our cats in the same way that modern food choices are making our children diabetic. It has too much carb for a carnivore. Switch to lower carb wet food like Fancy Feast. Love your cat that much and he'll live a longer, healthier, happier life.