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We had to make a somewhat impromptu trip up to Minnesota for a funeral for J's family over Thanksgiving weekend (J's Aunt Linda died on 20 Nov and her funeral was up in Bagley on the Friday after Thanksgiving), so we therefore had to board three out of the four kids while we were away. Ulysses gets severely anxious and upset at the vet/in caged situations, so we had friends take care of him here at home. We boarded Dorene to make feeding time easier for our friends and because Dorene takes boarding like a champ anyway, and we have to board Harlow and Lars because of their medical needs.
A little pre-story: we'd not been testing Lars' blood glucose per instructions from VCA Aurora internal medicine; they'd said that at his very low dose of insulin it wasn't necessary. We'd told them that at Brookville when we brought him in (and in his copious medical and feeding instructions notes), but we toted along his glucometer in case they decided to go ahead and test his blood glucose anyway.
They did, and it's a good thing they did. In doing so, they discovered that our boy was turning in normal to almost low normal blood glucose numbers when they tested him before his feedings and thereby didn't need any insulin at all while in their care!! :) To say we were pleasantly surprised was an understatement! :) They encouraged us to let VCA know of their results and to continue regular blood glucose testing at home, which we have been. VCA was happy to hear the news and also encouraged us to regularly test and record his numbers. He's largely been turning in great numbers since he's been home, although the past couple of days he's been in the low 200s, which meant he needed his one unit of Lantus insulin before his meal(s). This seems to have some correlation with his still slowly tapering prednisolone taper--his BG numbers go up after he gets the pred, which does not surprise us at all as pred is known to increase blood sugar in all species who've ingested it and have had their blood tested.
We're hoping the Pred Taper That Never Ends will end with the current dosing regimen of .5ml every third day. He's really on so little of the stuff as to basically be inconsequential anyway, so...yeah...We shall see in about a week when I call back for new instructions.
The best news is that Lars' asthma is under decent control with the negligible dose of oral pred and the primary controller being the steroid Flovent inhaler. I do notice a slight bit of a wheezy purr every now and again, but nothing to be really concerned about in my mind. So at least there's that going for us, which is nice. I've talked to Dr. Lehal at Brookville about Lars' asthma; he says if Lars has symptoms after he's off the oral pred we can increase the Flovent puffs and add an albuterol rescue inhaler if needs be to avoid going back on the oral pred if at all possible, so we've got other options in that regard, too. Good to know... :)
So, yeah. We're hoping that once Lars is completely off the oral pred that his diabetes will largely be under control and hopefully his need for any insulin will be negligible to completely unnecessary! :)
A little pre-story: we'd not been testing Lars' blood glucose per instructions from VCA Aurora internal medicine; they'd said that at his very low dose of insulin it wasn't necessary. We'd told them that at Brookville when we brought him in (and in his copious medical and feeding instructions notes), but we toted along his glucometer in case they decided to go ahead and test his blood glucose anyway.
They did, and it's a good thing they did. In doing so, they discovered that our boy was turning in normal to almost low normal blood glucose numbers when they tested him before his feedings and thereby didn't need any insulin at all while in their care!! :) To say we were pleasantly surprised was an understatement! :) They encouraged us to let VCA know of their results and to continue regular blood glucose testing at home, which we have been. VCA was happy to hear the news and also encouraged us to regularly test and record his numbers. He's largely been turning in great numbers since he's been home, although the past couple of days he's been in the low 200s, which meant he needed his one unit of Lantus insulin before his meal(s). This seems to have some correlation with his still slowly tapering prednisolone taper--his BG numbers go up after he gets the pred, which does not surprise us at all as pred is known to increase blood sugar in all species who've ingested it and have had their blood tested.
We're hoping the Pred Taper That Never Ends will end with the current dosing regimen of .5ml every third day. He's really on so little of the stuff as to basically be inconsequential anyway, so...yeah...We shall see in about a week when I call back for new instructions.
The best news is that Lars' asthma is under decent control with the negligible dose of oral pred and the primary controller being the steroid Flovent inhaler. I do notice a slight bit of a wheezy purr every now and again, but nothing to be really concerned about in my mind. So at least there's that going for us, which is nice. I've talked to Dr. Lehal at Brookville about Lars' asthma; he says if Lars has symptoms after he's off the oral pred we can increase the Flovent puffs and add an albuterol rescue inhaler if needs be to avoid going back on the oral pred if at all possible, so we've got other options in that regard, too. Good to know... :)
So, yeah. We're hoping that once Lars is completely off the oral pred that his diabetes will largely be under control and hopefully his need for any insulin will be negligible to completely unnecessary! :)
