Tuesday, April 2, 2013

Glipizide Trial & Pancreatitis

Well.. we are trying a new technique with Merry.  He is now on 8 units of Prozinc and his glucose readings are about 300-400 still.  So the vet has us trying out Glipizide in the liquid form along with the 8 units.  This weekend he will be on it about 3 weeks and so we will do a curve on Saturday and see how his numbers are.  If they aren't any lower still then we're going to switch him to a different insulin.

Pippin is now on 2 units of Prozinc and his numbers are perfect.  Today they were 203.  But then all last week he has been doing some EPIC pukes.  It's straight bile.  This happened to him in 2010 and we went to a different vet then who took xrays to see if anything was blocking his intestines and discovered he was constipated . That vet just sent us home with an enema and had us do it ourselves at home.  Well today we went to the new vet that we love with Pippin and told them about what is going on.  This vet not only took an xray but also took blood to check the pancreas.  Pippin does have Pancreatitis which she said is common in cats that have diabetes.  He is also very constipated (like last time). The vet I take them to now actually did the enema for me this time which was nice! It turns out when a cat is diabetic you can't give them medicine that is given to cats normally for diabetes.  Sooooooo (my cats always have drama) we have to give him pain meds because pancreatitis is very painful, he gets NSAIDS to help with the inflammation of the pancreas instead of steroids that are normally given. My vet posted a picture on facebook of Pippin getting the enema!  Yea... so I'm going to post it here too!


So in a month we go back and check Pippin's pancreas numbers and see if they have gone back to normal.  Also we must make sure he doesn't puke because the vet said that this is very bad for a cat's pancreas.  Diabetic cats are drama!

Update on 5/1/2013  The Glipizide is working.  Merry's glucose is perfect.  He is on Glipizide and 8 units of insulin and everything is perfect!