Kitty update
Feb. 13th, 2021 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nosrednaydujSo I took my bad kitty to the vet, where we learned she is developing diabetes. This is apparently a known side effect of long-term steroid use. So, we are going to be switching to a new thing, Atopica, which is an immunosuppressant, and has less severe side effects, but will have similar inflammation reducing effects to work on the inflammatory bowel disease. With an improved diet (I'm only serving her the food that she came with), the diarrhea has abated, and improved litter box behavior has resulted.
Atopica takes a week to take effect, so we'll be continuing the same steroid dose for that week, and then tapering off the steroid over the next two weeks. Then a week after that when we'll have only Atopica, we'll go in for bloodwork again and see how diabetes is progressing, hopefully also abating.
We're not going to do anything about the high blood sugar during that month; apparently it's not currently excessively high, and blasting more stuff at her little system is maybe not best. Hopefully the diabetes will recede after the steroid is gone, and we won't be having to go to insulin. I have had a diabetic cat before (Mottle), and she was extremely cooperative about everything, so it was very easy to even monitor her blood sugar myself. I'm not so sanguine about Jetty's cooperation, so I really hope the diabetes does abate...
Annoyingly she doesn't like the taste of the new medication, so it's been a struggle to get her to eat the little splodge of food I mix it into. I'm about to try tuna water, although that's not on her diet, so I hope it doesn't have the usual bad side effect of improper food.
Atopica takes a week to take effect, so we'll be continuing the same steroid dose for that week, and then tapering off the steroid over the next two weeks. Then a week after that when we'll have only Atopica, we'll go in for bloodwork again and see how diabetes is progressing, hopefully also abating.
We're not going to do anything about the high blood sugar during that month; apparently it's not currently excessively high, and blasting more stuff at her little system is maybe not best. Hopefully the diabetes will recede after the steroid is gone, and we won't be having to go to insulin. I have had a diabetic cat before (Mottle), and she was extremely cooperative about everything, so it was very easy to even monitor her blood sugar myself. I'm not so sanguine about Jetty's cooperation, so I really hope the diabetes does abate...
Annoyingly she doesn't like the taste of the new medication, so it's been a struggle to get her to eat the little splodge of food I mix it into. I'm about to try tuna water, although that's not on her diet, so I hope it doesn't have the usual bad side effect of improper food.
