Herman is now OTJ!
It took only six weeks to get him into remission!
I have some wonderful news to tell, Herman is OTJ and in remission those words I never thought I would say and especially when he was first diagnosed, as the vet didn’t give us any indication. We were shocked when he was diagnosed, he went from a 14 year old “kitten” to a 14 year old going on 90 and all within a very short space of time. We noticed he was jumping up on the vanity every time we were in the bathroom and he wanted to drink from the tap and he started to lose his “kitten” energy. We took him to the vet for tests but nothing showed up. He stared losing weight and he became really hungry sometimes ravenous which was unlike him because he didn’t really care much for food. I guess that’s why it was such a shock to us that he got diabetes as he was always underweight and we were under the impression that fat cats get diabetes. It was probably about three months after we noticed he wasn’t his normal self that he had the episode where we nearly lost him, he was to stay in the vets for over a week before we could get him home and then attempt to look after a diabetic cat. Neither of us had any knowledge whatsoever about diabetes so it was a huge learning curve. The vet tried to help but their approach to diabetes is not like the TR approach. I assumed he would be on twice daily insulin for the rest of his life (which I gathered wouldn’t be very long) and I think the vet expected that too and that we would be watching the clock every 12 hours so we could make sure he got his insulin on the 12 hour mark every day. Our lives back then changed and it was very stressful as we had to make sure we were home at 6.30 every night and 6.30 every morning without fail. We were going through a guessing game with the vets to try and work out his insulin doses and his levels were bouncing all around the place. Luckily Herman is a very placid, patient and kind kittie because he put up with all the pricking and prodding and the experimenting we did on him. I don’t know why I did but I decided to do a search on Facebook to see if there were any groups out there where I could find out about diabetes and I came across this group DCH. I stared seeing people mentioning the word TR and the forum but it all sounded too daunting and I was worried that if I agreed to TR that I would be tied down to something that I have to agree to and I would have to devote time to and I didn’t have time to spend, I don’t have a lot of spare time so I didn’t want to have extra work to do. Curiosity finally got me (either that or Herman’s guardian angel made me do it) and I finally decided to dip my toes in the water. I still didn’t do anything straight away as I didn’t know what I was committing myself to, poor Rosemary touched base with me but I ignored her for awhile and I started to think oh no what have I done I shouldn’t have joined the forum because now I have made myself known. I finally decided it was rude to ignore Rosemary’s help so I took the next (and best step) that I could imagine and followed the steps of immersing myself into the forum. I had no idea what I was doing but Rosemary instructed me through everything and bit by bit and day by day I was learning new things about the forum and how to navigate around it. So much so that I really looked forward to my twice a day ritual of posting Herman’s logs and having a chat with Rosemary (which I really miss now). The forum became my security blanket but I must admit it was quite scary to start with and I went into panic mode in the first few days as I wasn’t able to get hold of Rosemary and I had a question and I panicked as I had lost my security blanket. Unbeknown to me it was a public holiday in Canada and Rosemary had a house full of visitors for the weekend and hadn’t had the opportunity to get onto the forum I also didn’t realise that she was 15 hours behind us in Australia so quite often her posts to me we at some ungodly hour of the day for her. Anyway, Rosemary’s instructions always helped and I was able to work it out and I became quite proficient in the forum whereas in the beginning it was very daunting and I had no idea how to use it. I am so grateful for TR, DCH FB group, the forum but mores so to Rosemary for making our boy well again, she is a very special lady. Just a note to add to this, every time I hear of someone with a diabetic kittie I do not hesitate to tell them about the benefits of this group and TR and that if they want to do the best thing for the kittie is to join up. I’d also liked to say that the amount of personal time the advisors, admin and others devote to helping our kitties is to be applauded because without you our kitties wouldn’t get the chance to become well again. Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart you are very passionate people.