Home Testing
If the thought of pricking your cat's ear to draw a drop of blood scares you, take a breath and think about it. If you can get over that fear (and it's a silly fear, if you really think about it), you can help your cat get regulated and stay that way. Imagine knowing your cat's blood sugar at any time of day or night. No more wondering if they're running high or low, or if the insulin is working or if the dry food they insist on eating is raising their blood sugar. You can find the right dose all by yourself by testing before each shot, every day, and doing your own "curves" (what's a curve? read below) to see how your cat (or dog) is responding to the insulin over the course of a day.
Still not sold? The only people who can’t easily do home testing are people who care for feral (wild, stray) cats or very wild dogs who won’t let people hold or touch them. You have to be able to hold the animal or sit next to him and know he won’t run for a minute. If your cat will sit in your lap or allow you to sit beside them, and if you can touch their ears without being scratched or bitten, you can home test successfully.
Your Shopping List
- 1 box of glucometer test strips, to match the meter you bought. A box of test strips costs about $50 for 100 strips. You can often get good prices at places like Walmart, rather than small drug stores. Shop around.
- 1 bag/packet of lancets, the tiny pins you use to prick the cat’s ear. The glucometer will come with a lancet pen, a spring-loaded pen that shoots the pin out and into (through) the cat’s ear to draw a drop of blood. You put the lancet in the tip of the pen. A pack of 50 lancets will cost about $10, and should last you a long, long time. Unlike syringes which should NEVER be used twice, you can use a lancet more than once, as long as you use alcohol to clean it between uses. Some people use a fresh lancet for each test, and that's fine (perhaps wise), but many don't -- I refer to both human diabetics and people testing animals -- and it doesn't seem to present any problems. The syringes, though, again -- NEVER use them more than once, and always deposit the used syringes in a sharps container at your vet's (or get one of your own) -- don't just toss them in the trash.
The glucometer is easy to use – you put a test strip (about the size of a paper match) in the end of the meter, the meter turns on automatically, and waits for you. Then you take the lancet pen with a lancet in it, and cock it (pull the spring loaded trigger back) and press the tip of the pen to the back of your pet’s ear. You press the button on the side of the pen, and click! The pin quickly shoots into and then back out of the cat’s ear, a blood drop forms, and you touch the tip of the test strip to the drop, and the strip sips the blood in. 30 seconds later (the meter counts down), your result appears in the meter’s window. Write it down (I kept a note pad with the meter, and noted each day’s test results). That’s all there is to it – it takes about 10 minutes per day ( 5 minutes per test), so it’s no big deal in terms of your schedule.
Need visuals to help you? Click HERE to see some diagrams to show you where to prick the cat's ear and how to hold his or her ear during the test.
Now, before you panic and think that your pet will wig out if you do this, realize that his ears have very few skin nerves in them. That’s why you use the ears rather than the pads on the feet – the fleshy pads DO have a lot of nerves, and the pin prick with the lancet hurts if you use it on the feet/pads. When it’s done on the ear, it’s a quick sting, and that’s it. I swear. Jasper never even flinched. You can get your pet used to having his ears touched by starting to play with them now – hold the cup of his ear between your fingers, rub his ears, just play with them. That way it won’t be a shock when you start handling his ears in order to test him. You can also do soothing things like putting a warmed washcloth over his ear prior to a test to increase blood flow (by warming the ear) and to soothe him overall. If an animal’s ear is cold to the touch prior to a test, you may have trouble getting a large enough blood drop, so if you feel the ear and it’s cold, use a microwaved damp washcloth, pressed to the animal’s ear to warm it. There are other warming techniques, such as a sock with dry (uncooked) rice in the toe, knotted to keep the rice in the toe. You can warm this in the microwave as well, and the rice holds the heat. Press the warm toe of the sock to the cat’s ear, and within 10-20 seconds, the ear is nice and warm and should produce a nice blood drop. The size drop you need is about the size of this 0. You don’t need much blood at all, but you do need enough to fill the tiny column at the very tip of the test strip.
The
Answers to:
What's
a Curve, When Do I Test,
and Other Frequently-Asked Questions
If he’s over
200, give the full dose
If he’s under 200 but over 150, give half the normal dose*
If he’s under 150, don’t give any insulin at all.
* If
he's ever gone "hypo" (dropped to 50 or less), withhold the
dose entirely if he's under 200.
Some people won’t give any insulin if their pet’s under 200, and there’s some merit to that. Jasper only needed 2 units, so it wasn’t so risky to follow the formula I set out above. If your pet is on more than 3 units per shot, you might want to be more conservative and withhold the shot if he’s below 200. NEVER increase the insulin dose by more than half a unit, even if the animal’s blood sugar is very high (400 or higher) pre-shot. Any changes in dose should be made in the tiniest increments, and you should stick with a new dose for at least 3 days before increasing again.
Another useful test is a glucose curve, which you can do at home with your glucometer. A curve is a series of blood tests done over 1 or 2 days, in 2-3 hour intervals. The results show you how long the insulin lasts, how the cat’s glucose responds to food, and how the cat’s sugar levels are over the course of a full day. You can do a curve on the weekends or any time you’ll be home for an entire day. You can do one at home with your glucometer, or you can take him to the vet and leave him there for a day or two and they’ll do it – BUT having the vet test your pet’s blood is not always a good idea. The stress of being poked and prodded at the vet can raise an animal’s blood sugar by as much as 200 points, and result in the vet prescribing a much higher insulin dose than is really needed. Jasper was never over 300 at home, but every time I took him to the vet, they’d test him and he’d be at 400 or 450. It got so that they stopped testing him themselves, and they’d use my number, taken before we left the house for the appointment.
Another thing – prepare yourself for your vet telling you not to home test or that home tests aren’t accurate. This is total nonsense, but a lot of vets, faced with losing the money from people not coming in for their pet’s blood tests, will use these dumb arguments to keep you from doing it. Don’t listen to them. The meter can read the amount of sugar in any creature’s blood, and it is accurate – otherwise, thousands of human diabetics wouldn’t use them. Human MD’s demand that their human diabetic patients test themselves, so the idea that glucometers aren’t as accurate as the tests done on vials of blood drawn at the vet makes no sense at all. The vet, however, can go from seeing you (and billing you) once a month to just once a year, and that’s scary to his or her bottom line. Other vets are simply ignorant – for a list of some of the more stupid things vets have told people, go to Jasper’s site and follow the link to his Stupid Vet Tricks page. It’d be funny if the bad advice weren’t so dangerous!
Feel free to contact
me for help when you get started home testing. The key
is to be calm, even if you’re nervous about pricking your pet’s
ear. If you’re calm and very matter-of-fact about the whole thing,
the animal will pick up on that and not be alarmed when you sit down next
to him or her and begin handling their ear. If you’re tense and upset,
the pet will pick up on that, too. Remember, this is a simple test that
children do on themselves. Your pet will not be harmed, and will be helped
by your testing them at home. You’ll have a much better sense of
how their blood sugar is responding to the insulin and food you provide,
and you can save the pet a lot of stress by not going to the vet as often.
It’s worth any hesitation or fear you might feel at the thought of
poking your pet in the ear to draw a drop of blood. You can do it –
and your pet will be so much better off as a result.