Extern Daily Diary This morning was spent sharing what we learned at Dr. Bruyette’s diabetes lecture yesterday with the other doctors at LBAH. Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease in which the body either does not produce enough or respond appropriately to insulin that is produced. Insulin is a hormone that is crucial in helping the body’s cells take up and use blood sugar (glucose). Without insulin available or functioning properly, the blood sugar will continue to rise but the cells are not able to use it. The body’s cells begin a “starvation mode” even as they are surrounded by food they can’t use. The good news is that diabetes is manageable with insulin injections and dietary changes. Sometimes, the condition is reversible in cats; our new information really focuses in on how to improve the chance of achieving remission in a cat that has been newly diagnosed with diabetes through aggressive dietary change and insulin management. The new information we learned will be put on our diabetes page- lbah/word/diabetes-mellitus-sugar-diabetes/ I also checked in on Reina, a beautiful stray cat who is being adopted into a new home. Her new home has two other cats, one of which has feline asthma and is more susceptible to diseases. Reina came to the LBAH for a general health appointment and vaccinations. Since Reina has lived outside and not much is known about her history, we strongly recommended in addition to regular blood work, fecal exams and vaccinations that Reina be quarantined in a controlled area for 4-7 days to be watched for the development of any type of illness, especially respiratory infections that are highly contagious. If the asthmatic cat gets such an infection it could prove to be fatal. Reina’s new owner did not feel it would be possible to keep Reina separate from the her two cats in her house and elected to have her complete a quarantine by staying with us. This is sound advice for anyone bringing a new pet into his or her house, regardless of whether it is a stray from the streets or rescued from a shelter since you can never be sure that a new pet has not picked up a disease just before being brought in. So far, Reina has not shown any signs of illness and has passed all her health exams with flying colors. The rest of the day was spent with a Hill’s representative learning about new diets being developed to help overweight pets slim down to a healthy weight and also help cats with urinary disease. These new diets are a big help, especially for those cats that urinate outside the litter box. I also performed a necropsy to determine why a rabbit passed away suddenly, worked with a very sick pit bull, and watching dental cleaning and tooth extractions on a cat with serious dental disease. Tomorrow we have ultrasounds, one of them is on Buddy the dog that ate the ice pack. Based on the blood panel it is looking more like Buddy has liver disease. We ran a coagulation panel today in anticipation of doing an aspirate of Buddy’s liver during tomorrow’s ultrasound.
Posted on: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 06:59:20 +0000
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