Curving Your Diabetic Dog Part 1
Today we talk about doing a curve on your pup. We addressed this quite some time ago, and will revisit it today. The prior post was more of a “how to and why” post, today we talk about how to interpret your curve. A little refresher on the “why” we curve.
Early on in your diagnosis, you need the full 12 hour curve results to make dosing changes. Sadly, too many vets will make a dose change based on a spot check instead of the full curve data. There are many risks with this method, the least of which is making a dose change of a powerful drug without all of the information needed to do so.
A proper curve consists of 7 readings beginning with your morning fasting (the test that you do before the morning meal) number and ending with your evening fasting number. You will test every two hours. If you test at 7am, you will test again at 9am, 11am, 1pm, 3pm, 5pm and end with your evening fasting number at 7pm. This may seem like a lot of “pokes”, but you need these readings to determine how your food and insulin are working together and to get a full picture of what your numbers look like. I know that it may seem easier to just take your pup to the vet, drop him/her off and pick them up at the end of the day. Unless your vet is open from 7am-7pm or 8am-8pm, it is my experience that most vet practices aren’t; you won’t get a full curve.
If you take your pup in for a full curve instead of doing it yourself at home, I’d imagine that you will not take him/her in until you have fed and injected. This means that the first test that your vet does will likely be during a food spike. This is called a post-prandial spike. It means that your pup’s breakfast is digesting and his/her insulin hasn’t begun to absorb yet so the number that starts your vet’s curve will be inflated. Also keep in mind that it is stressful for your pup to be at the vet all day, sitting in a cage with other stressed out pups all around him/her. We all know that stress can affect BG (Blood Glucose) in a significant way, so your curve likely will not be as accurate as if you did it at home.
Let’s talk cost. If you do your own curve at home, it will cost you under $10.00, not bad for accurate information! Your vet has a business to run and staff to pay so of course it will be more expensive to have a curve run there. The vet that I saw charged $30-$40 for each “poke”. If you have no other option, perhaps take your meter and strips to the vet so they can use yours and not charge you for the use of their meter and strips. That won’t help with accuracy, but it may help with cost.
We do a 12 hour curve because insulin is a 12 hour medication and we want to see how numbers fluctuate through the whole course of the dose. We want to see where in the curve your insulin reaches its peak (this is called a nadir) so that if you do make a dose change, you will have a good idea where you may need to spot check after an increase. We want to be sure that your pup is safe at all points of the day.
Once again, I had hoped to get all of this information into one blog post, but I will have to cover interpreting your results in our next entry. Stay tuned!
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Until next time…