Some of you may remember Bandit's history, but a quick recap: He was
diagnosed with insulinoma in 10/97 and had surgery soon following.  He
recovered well from the surgery and was able to maintain his blood sugar
for about six months w/o meds.  When it started to drop, we started him on
pred, when he did fine on for another six months, when he had a diabetic
reaction to the pred, (blood glucose 300+!) Obviously we discontinued the
pred.  immediately.  Since then which was about a year ago (9/98), his
glucose has stayed stable with just supplemental feedings of his "mush",
which has developed into a mixture of Timmy's recipe, Insulinoma elixir
and Bob's Chicken Gravy.
 
Well, the time I've been dreading has come, although I must admit he stayed
stable without meds for far longer than I had dared to hope.  He's been
showing increasing signs of back leg weakness during the past few weeks and
yesterday's bg test confirmed VERY low levels.  Dr. Welborn ran the tests
three times and they were 33, 26 and 46.  Obviously, we need to intervene
here.  For the short term, I've started him on pred again, but this will
not work as a long term solution due to his previous difficulty with it.  I
know about proglycem and Dr. W is looking into cost and dosage of that for
me.  I'm curious though about opinions on repeating the surgery.  Bandit
will be 7 yrs old in October.  I *think* he's in fairly good health for his
age (he's my oldest so I have none to compare him to).  Other than the
insulinoma, no medical problems that we know of except that he's (ahem)
rather on the chubby side right now due to his low activity level recently.
I haven't yet talked to Dr. W about surgery -- I don't know how the excess
fat would come into play in making surgery more difficult.  We've also come
to the conclusion that Bandit is pretty much blind.  He's been walking into
things, and seems to pretty much navigate by touch and smell, and hearing.
Has anyone heard of this being related to insulinoma, like diabetics have
vision problems?  He doesn't have cataracts, Dr. W. checked for this.
 
Please let me know what your thoughts are on surgery vs.  medication for
Bandit.  We appreciate your help!
 
Lucie
 
                        @-"-@
                       (=^ ' ^ =)
                    o00 -\o/- 00o
[Posted in FML issue 2751]