6/6 - Xander | AMPS 286 | Feline Diabetes Management Board

6/6 - Xander | AMPS 286

Brianna & Xander

Brianna & Xander

Active member
6/5/25

Fingers crossed that this increase does something (but not too much).

We had a storage tub next to the one window Xander can really see out of, so I put his blanket on top so he could sit and look out. He loved it, but it couldn't have been very comfortable, so I'd been wanting to get him a real bed to put there. Yesterday I was able to set up a short perch for exactly window height for him and he loves it. 🥹 It also had some little hanging toy balls on with bells, but he's more concerned with biting the string off to eat than playing with them, 🙄 so I had to take those off. He also likes the little dark corner going underneath. Makes me so happy to see him in his spot though. The unfortunate thing is that this is the spot where his Libre phone doesn't pick up a signal in any of the convenient places.

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He's precious! Mine all love to look out the window. I hate that the libre signal isn't good in that spot--dang it! Can you manually scan him? I don't know how libres work, so I'm not sure. Also, I noticed that ball on the string in the photo, and my first thought (before I read your post) was, 'oh, that would never last at our house' :D Jude and Hazel are fine with the dangly balls, but the kittens? Death to the dangly balls! The worst culprit is John Lewis; I have literally timed him, and he has the string sliced in about 10 seconds 😳

Best of luck to Xander as he works this new dose!
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Mary & Jude said:
He's precious! Mine all love to look out the window. I hate that the libre signal isn't good in that spot--dang it! Can you manually scan him? I don't know how libres work, so I'm not sure. Also, I noticed that ball on the string in the photo, and my first thought (before I read your post) was, 'oh, that would never last at our house' :D Jude and Hazel are fine with the dangly balls, but the kittens? Death to the dangly balls! The worst culprit is John Lewis; I have literally timed him, and he has the string sliced in about 10 seconds 😳

Best of luck to Xander as he works this new dose!
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Thanks, Mary! 🥰

Yeah, it's very annoying. I can leave the phone in one specific spot to work there, but if I do and he leaves that spot it doesn't really work for anywhere else. Not a problem when I'm awake, but obviously while I'm sleeping. The 3s can't be scanned manually, they just transmit via bluetooth. If it's a boring cycle it's no big deal as long as it connects within 8 hours; it'll just update the graph. That becomes more of a problem if it is an active cycle because obviously I need to know what's happening as it happens, not when I wake up.

I'm glad Xander's not the only weird one who'd rather eat the string! 🤦🏻‍♀️ WHY. lol Just play with it! 10 seconds is definitely a record! He deserves some kind of "Wow, good job, but stop it" award. 😂

Looking like this dose is gonna do something - we've got some action going at almost +3. We'll see how much further it goes!

Love the lil surfing Xander 🥹🥹🥹
 
Aaaand we're lime (supposedly). 🤦🏻‍♀️ Yesterday at this time we were at 320, all pinks and yellows for days. Increased by 0.25 u, lime.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of major swing between doses? Last time I tried to do the halfway-between dose, it had the same effect as the dose below it. I don't know how to find the middle ground because there seems to be no in-between with him.

It may not look like it with that big dive, but I am feeding the curve. I gave him his usual small snack at PS, +1, +2 and he didn't want his +3 (seemed nauseated, probably from the big drop). I got him to eat that at +4, right as he was hitting the 50s-60s. He pulled out of the lime within 3 minutes and before the food had time to work (but he may go back down).

ETA: LO now. 😩

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Enjoying his lunch at the window, 'cause I can't resist.
 
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Brianna & Xander said:
Aaaand we're lime (supposedly). 🤦🏻‍♀️ Yesterday at this time we were at 320, all pinks and yellows for days. Increased by 0.25 u, lime.

Does anyone have experience with this kind of major swing between doses? Last time I tried to do the halfway-between dose, it had the same effect as the dose below it. I don't know how to find the middle ground because there seems to be no in-between with him.

It may not look like it with that big dive, but I am feeding the curve. I gave him his usual small snack at PS, +1, +2 and he didn't want his +3 (seemed nauseated, probably from the big drop). I got him to eat that at +4, right as he was hitting the 50s-60s. He pulled out of the lime within 3 minutes and before the food had time to work (but he may go back down).

ETA: LO now. 😩

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Enjoying his lunch at the window, 'cause I can't resist.
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Up up please, Xander 🆙
He looks so happy on his perch, Brianna. Good job. He’s such a happy boy🐈‍⬛😻

Ivy tends to really react to an increase (at some point, this week it was dose #3) then she flattens out 😩

It’s such tinkering and trial and error. Up and down, rinse, repeat. Exhausting, isn’t it?

Wishing you a nice stable cycle! 😻❤️‍🩹🥰🐈‍⬛
 
Staci & Ivy said:
Up up please, Xander 🆙
He looks so happy on his perch, Brianna. Good job. He’s such a happy boy🐈‍⬛😻

Ivy tends to really react to an increase (at some point, this week it was dose #3) then she flattens out 😩

It’s such tinkering and trial and error. Up and down, rinse, repeat. Exhausting, isn’t it?

Wishing you a nice stable cycle! 😻❤️‍🩹🥰🐈‍⬛
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Thanks, Staci! 💖

Not sure if I'm going to be able to wait and see if he flattens out - he's been LO for about 11 minutes at this point, so it seems like I need to immediately decrease again. Unless people think I shouldn't. 😕 Endless impossible-feeling decisions.
 
I've finally gotten him to hang out in the low 50s for an hour.

I just cannot comprehend 2.25 giving him mid-300s yesterday and 2.5 giving me hours of limes today. 🤯

Maybe he'd've come up quicker with actual HC but I was trying to balance sending him stratospheric with just bringing him back to the 50s (and avoiding the vomiting that tends to come with the 20% food, which would obviously just make it worse).
 
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All right--can I talk this out a bit with you?
Possibly NDW with the increase?
So, if you're not to take back to back reductions, are you to hold this dose, and are you then to hope that he will settle into it?? Like the last increase where he dipped into the limes, but you held that dose, and he eventually stopped nose-diving (but stayed too high). Are these just long bounces--from 6/2 to 6/6?
I just think Wendy's input will help.
 
Mary & Jude said:
All right--can I talk this out a bit with you?
Possibly NDW with the increase?
So, if you're not to take back to back reductions, are you to hold this dose, and are you then to hope that he will settle into it?? Like the last increase where he dipped into the limes, but you held that dose, and he eventually stopped nose-diving (but stayed too high). Are these just long bounces--from 6/2 to 6/6?
I just think Wendy's input will help.
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Absolutely! I'm at a loss. He's so unpredictable (to me).

The NDW sticky says that it should only last for 24 hours. Maybe? I dunno. 🤔

Just "thinking out loud" with the series of events:
6/1 PM: Increased to 2.25 after 10 cycles with minimal just-barely greens. Super active at the end of the cycle, leading into the low PS on 6/2.
6/2: Very active AM cycle, great day. Caught a 44 on the Libre at the time it happened, but it lasted less than 5 minutes before going back over 50, and the Libre removed it from the chart as an error, showing the low of the day being 53 at about +6. So I didn't decrease. Figured a bounce started with the PM cycle.
6/3-6/4: Still waiting for supposed bounce to clear.
6/5: Still waiting, but numbers are getting worse. Increased to 2.5 for PM dose 6 cycles after his last good one.
Today: Chaos.

Maybe the bounce was going to last longer than 6 cycles? Nothing else has changed about our routine.

Since the last 2 dose changes were both increases it wouldn't be a back-to-back reduction, at least. In today's case, unlike on 6/2, the Libre hasn't removed that extended LO from the chart (so it doesn't think it's erroneous) and it lasted so long that I'd be really uncomfortable not reducing.

How on earth are you supposed to find a "right" dose when such a tiny difference produces ridiculously opposite extremes? Why does he either float in outer space or absolutely nosedive with no middle ground? 😩

I hate tagging people, always feel like a PITA. 🫣 But if you think @Wendy&Neko might be able to figure it out, it's worth a shot!

ETA: Another thought: as I mentioned above, maybe I should have gone straight to HC but I was trying to avoid going overboard (I never know if he's going to continue to dive or if he's gonna just come back up anyway) and he often throws that up, which would make it worse. But since I got him back into the 50s he's been surfing there very stably for a couple of hours, so maybe if I'd gotten him up sooner he'd have spent more of those hours where he is now. I dunno. I wish there were more HC options that were available to me and didn't make him puke.
 
I was looking at 5/27, the last time he showed you LO. This time it lasted longer and seemed harder to get him out of LO? Do I have that right? Like the 27th, this was also the second cycle of the increase. Definitely NOT NDW which sends them up, not down.

The 6/2 active cycle was after a bounce break cycle (sliding down all night), and those cycles tend to have more downward momentum. Often reductions from bounce breaking don't hold. Last night was not a bounce breaker cycle.

Have you ever tried adding a drop of karo/honey/syrup to his food to make HC? FF gravy lovers didn't agree with Neko - turns out she had a grain or wheat gluten allergy, So I had to switch to an HC with potatoes for carbs.
 
Wendy&Neko said:
I was looking at 5/27, the last time he showed you LO. This time it lasted longer and seemed harder to get him out of LO? Do I have that right? Like the 27th, this was also the second cycle of the increase. Definitely NOT NDW which sends them up, not down.

The 6/2 active cycle was after a bounce break cycle (sliding down all night), and those cycles tend to have more downward momentum. Often reductions from bounce breaking don't hold. Last night was not a bounce breaker cycle.

Have you ever tried adding a drop of karo/honey/syrup to his food to make HC? FF gravy lovers didn't agree with Neko - turns out she had a grain or wheat gluten allergy, So I had to switch to an HC with potatoes for carbs.
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Yup, this time was much longer and pretty stubborn. On 5/27 he came back up to 48 before he even ate the food I brought him. Very quick and easy. Going back further, 5/12 was really stubborn too, but at that point I was only using 12% to bring him up at first.

For the record (I could be misunderstanding) I didn't reduce after the 6/2 active cycle, I just maintained and he never came down. Or are you just saying that it shouldn't be a problem to reduce tonight since last night wasn't bounce-breaking like 6/1 PM was?

No, I haven't, though I do have plenty of honey. I didn't know how much to use (though literally a drop is easy enough) and I never know when to break out which gun, if that makes sense. Next time he's being stubborn about coming back up I'll try the honey. I was under the impression that the honey/karo/syrup options didn't last long, but maybe that just refers to the rubbing it on the gums when they're not eating, and putting it in food would make it hold better?

Thank you for looking, Wendy, I really appreciate it.
 
OMG!! Another wild ride, I’m so sorry. It must be so frustrating - either too much insulin or too little insulin. Why isn’t there a goldilocks amount 😣
I have no advice to give, but it sounds like you’re getting some good ideas from others. Everything is worth trying? Hopefully something sticks, but I know you’ve been waiting forever for something to stick.
Great job keeping Xander safe today 🖤 I hope you’re able to get some rest tonight and he surfs safely.
 
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