Diabetes and EPI

[Lori Hernandez]

Anyone here that has the same dx? Our baby has been a diabetic for three years now. We were doing really good up until December of 2015 when she suffered a very severe vestibular attack. She was unable to walkfor 3 weeks but soon after she started to lose weight but still eating. She had always a gurgly tummy and takes 5 mg Pepcid at night before bed. Now she was losing weight and stools became like a soft serve. We went on tylosin for a month that seemed to work for a while, no gurgles and eating, but then developed UTI and then a round of clavomox and poo returned to soft serve again. Vet put her on metron then 1!week later She was just diagnosed 6/21/16 with a TLI of 2.8 and no b12 absorption. She is now getting weekly b12 and enzymes added to food. Poop normal but now she is drinking excessively, blood sugar higher because she is not pooping food right out or is it the enzymes that we would told that excessive drinking can occur?? She is use to getting treats but was advised by EPI forum not to. I still have to get a alpha trak (a little nervous about that) dr just said to use glucose strips. She is hungry all the time but when she is not feeling well I have to coax her to eat then insulin then she drinks so much water 1-3 hours after then she starts to feel better and she is herself. She gets so hungry then not feeling good because of lack of food. It's a vicious cycle. Following is her daily regimen

620 am. 1/2 c blue basic turkey potato senior
1/4 c cooked chicken breast
1 tbsp boiled sweet potato
1 tbsp id stew can rx food
3/4 tsp PAnakare enzymes
30 minutes after eating 5 uts of humilin insulin


1-3 hours of drinking, drinking,drinking

Repeated 12 hours later in evening except she gets her Pepcid at bedtime.

Snacks on green beans and one cookie made from kibble, swt potato and chicken broth (baked home made treats)

She is still soooo hungry it's hard to hold off for a full 12 hours, tummy starts to gurgle and then she doesn't want to eat and coaxing starts all over again. Maybe a sign of too high BG? She is sitting right here literally looking at me whining for a snack and I just gave her 5 frozen grn beans with a little bit of string cheese. Any suggestions or input. As far as strips vs alpha trak and for my in between starvation mode?

[Joan]

Re: Diabetes and EPI

You can give snacks or go to 3 meals per day, but you must add enzymes to any food given. If you don't add the enzymes, she won't digest the food, and consequently it will do her no good, hunger wise or health wise.

To change up her schedule, you will really need to get testing the blood glucose levels. But in the short term give a snack (if you mix up 1/2 cup food in morning for snacks during the day, you will need to add 1/2 tsp enzymes) then give it to her as needed. But the insulin will have to be increased to cover this food. Giving food more often will make her tummy feel better, and so should improve her appetite, but again, the insulin will have to be adjusted and to do this testing is essential.

Your diet looks good, is she gaining any weight back since you started the enzymes?

BTW if you are testing her bg, then you will know if it is a good idea to wait 30 minutes for the insulin injection or not. If you are incubating the enzymes in the food (for 20 minutes or so?) then you are actually doing what is needed for her , but it pre digests the food, which should make it get into her blood stream more quickly, so that 30 minute wait may give her a huge rise in blood sugar, thus the drinking. As long as she is not vomiting the food, it may be a good idea to give the insulin directly after eating.

[jesse girl]

Re: Diabetes and EPI

dont really know much without knowing where blood sugar is

home testing may help point you in the write direction

[Rubytuesday]

Re: Diabetes and EPI

Yes, my girl had EPI and diabetes. I second everything Joan advises. She is right on with the pre digestion that occurs with the food due to enzymes. With the insulin taking a bit of time to work a big food rise can happen. Ruby used to get a huge food rise and then run out of insulin at 8-10 hrs.

I would do as Joan suggest and prepare some enzyme treated food if you might want to give a snack. Her body isn't able to digest anything untreated.

I would also recommend giving the insulin with food or right after if your afraid she won't eat.

With a combo of diseases such as this you need to be a bit more proactive. Testing will be key to fine tuning and enabling her to gain the weight quicker.

I know 1st hand how starving a dog with this set of diseases can be and how hard that is to witness but not feed. Try to realize that any time you go outside of the routine it sets you back as to finding a pattern and approach that enables her to absorb the most possible calories.

It is early days yet but I know how anxious you are to relieve her starving. I would pick an approach, be it 2 meals (ideal...if nothing else it's less confusing) or 3, and continue that approach for 1 week at which point I would do a 12 hr. curve.

In my opinion urine glucose testing strips are useless.

Curve:
Test
Food and insulin
Test every two hours until next food and insulin
If you fed three times a day you would test through to the third meal

You could then post the curve and we could quide you. There are a bunch of different approaches you can take in a situation like this and I tried many of them. The one for you will depend on many things, but mostly it will depend on your dogs curve results.

Tara

[Eddie]

Re: Diabetes and EPI

Our dog also has EPI and diabetes.

We are lucky to be able to get the sort of enzyme that you just sprinkle onto their food without the need to incubate (human version is called Creon I think, doggy version in UK is Lypex).

Using that we feed Eddie a total of four meals which seems to help with the hunger and perhaps helps his digestion (gurgles) a bit.

We measure out his full meal of kibble at breakfast time and give him maybe two thirds of it (with enzyme sprinkled on) plus all his insulin for the morning. He then gets the other third about two hours later. We do the same in the evening.

It seems to reduce the food rise because by the time he gets the second instalment, the insulin has started to work. It also reduces the hunger between meals - he doesn't get regular treats, and those he has are tiny. He used to be absolutely ravenous and that has all stopped on this regime. I wonder if this sort of routine might help your dog because it smooths out the peaks and troughs between meals a bit.

His tummy used to need Cimetidine pills to stop the gurgles but now it is usually ok without anything extra. When it was bad we used to give him cooked egg to settle it down though that was before he got diabetes as well.

I'd also second the idea of blood testing if you can manage it. I never thought we could do it but we have now been happily testing him for nearly four years and I wouldn't attempt to manage this without doing it. There is a lot of helpful info on this site and you can ask specific questions on here to get help with it.

Antonia

[Lori Hernandez]

Penny has been on her enzymes for about 3 weeks now. In 7 day weigh ins she was 13.2, 13.4, 13.6. 14.2, 13.6 she had a huge jump in weight then back down the next week. So frustrating. Went to buy an alpha trak but the pet store doesn't want to sell without Rx from my vet. My vet (internist)isn't really supportive of at home testing. She is going in next week again and he is going to do a frucosamine test. She's never had one of those before. Maybe he will be more supportive when she goes in next week. So I need a Rx for a monitor?
Snacks, we can only give her two meals a day and want to give her a snack when we leave for work and get back to hold her off on her 12 he interval feedings. Anyone recommending any homemade snack hat will be easy on her diabetes and epi?

[Lori Hernandez]

I also am giving her insulin right after she eats. She seems to be drinking less but it still is a lot of water she is still drinking. Today I did notice she urinated twice in house. How so I kno if she is getting a UTI?