The Defiant Enemy

I wrote a while ago about Parker’s diabetes being under control – for the moment. His dental surgery, which had been scheduled for 3rd August, has been postponed until the 9th. A doctor other than his regular veterinarian was going to perform the surgery; she seems perfectly capable in terms of skill, but, since the orange boy had been shunted among various doctors before he came to stay with me, it was decided that his regular doctor, who would be on holiday on the 3rd, should conduct the surgery; thus, the postponement.

But this article is actually about Tucker. Parker’s diabetes was by way of introduction. While my foster-cat's is being managed, Tucker’s is still defiant. Last weekend, I ran a curve on him. It was a very good curve: starting high (not actually very good), it descended with the injection of insulin to a most satisfactory number, before climbing again. All was pretty much as it should have been. The numbers could have been better, but they were acceptable.

This weekend, to confirm the findings, I performed another curve on the roly poly one. This time, his numbers early in the morning, before insulin, were low; not low enough to obviate the insulin but low enough to administer just one unit, rather than the usual two. Even that took him quite a bit beneath his nadir of the previous weekend. By evening, his numbers were high enough again for two units.

This is frustrating, because I have been giving Tucker two units twice a day in an effort to reduce its effects to what may be compared to a lowest common denominator. I wanted to clean the slate, at least partially, as he had previously been receiving four units in the morning and three at night. By lowering the amounts, I had hoped to render his numbers consistent, curve after curve. I had expected them to be high, but consistent. With his numbers beginning too low for his usual dose one morning, and high enough for it the next, we have still not achieved consistency.

However, there is a benefit to these tests. I will speak with Tucker’s doctor tomorrow, and I suspect that she will keep him at two units of insulin twice a day. Even if sometimes this is too much, it seems clear that anything higher than two would always be too much. Thus, it may be demonstrated that while not stabilised, the beast’s diabetes requires less insulin right now. That is good. I am not complacent enough about diabetes to think that it will always be this good, but I have learned enough about the condition to know that it is to be taken one day at a time.

Tucker’s situation therefore is both good and bad. He remains cheerful most of the time, a sausage of a cat who puts up with a great deal. His conduct while getting his ear poked for bloods samples eight times a day is exemplary, and when I tell him at the end of each test that it’s ’all done’, he purrs. That is Tucker in a nutshell. Not that I could ever fit him into one.

Oh, and regarding his photographs for the calendar: there were those who asked which picture would be used. The design of this year’s calendar, as with last year’s, allows us to use most, if not all, of the various cats’ images. For a whole month, hundreds of people will be able to look at seven or eight versions of my roly poly.

‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’