So I’m getting a new one in the next few weeks — giving a cat insulin.
One of my cats has had inflammatory bowel disease since 2011. In 2015, his IBD got a lot worse and we ended up putting him on prednisone, a move that I had put off as long as possible, since prednisone can cause cats to develop diabetes.
Last week, nearly two years after we put him on the prednisone, my vet did some blood work on him and found that his blood sugar was elevated. I brought him back in so that the vet could check his urine on Thursday of this week. The vet examined him and he was alert and his coat was shiny, and his liver felt good (cats who have diabetes tend to be lethargic, have ratty-looking coats, and have enlarged livers), so she told me that she didn’t think he had diabetes.
Well, there was sugar in his urine. So we’re going to have to take him off the prednisone and put him on a new anti-inflammatory medication and also put him on insulin. There is a greater than 0% chance that the diabetes may to into remission, assuming that the diabetes was caused by the prednisone.
The new anti-inflammatory is likely to be somewhere in the neighborhood of $70 per month, and so will the insulin. This is going to eat into my travel budget. I will probably have to economize on lunches and such (looks like I’ll be making tea for my lunch for the foreseeable future) in hopes that I can keep both the travel and the cat. If it comes down to it, though, the travel will be the thing that has to give.
I may eventually give in and put some Google ads on this page or something, in hopes that I’ll get enough money from that to make up the difference. And this may be the thing that leads me to start promoting this blog.
On the other hand, perhaps this will drive me to curl up in the corner in a fetal position and just hide there for a while.