Can’t Get Into the Building, Boss

Folks, there has been a really cool new development in the treatment of diabetes in pets. I’d love to share it with you, but I do feel like we need a little backgrounder on the disease itself. If you have a diabetic pet (it is a very common illness in cats and dogs), this will be the piece for you. The better you understand this condition, the more prepared you will be for unexpected situations.

Diabetes is a problem with the interaction between blood sugar (you get this from eating and digesting food, then absorbing all the nutrients in your gut) and insulin, which is supposed to be manufactured in your pancreas (a little gland in your belly). The nutrients in your arteries and veins use insulin as a key to enter your cells and do the work of the day. Each cell, then, is sort of like a tiny place of business, where the employees arrive each morning holding a key to enter the establishment. The big problem with diabetes is that there aren’t enough keys to go around (type I, that’s called) or else some of the door locks are broken (type II). Many employees are ready for work, but they can not enter the building. They mill around in the street and start to get rowdy as their deserted workplaces slowly start to fail. That situation can be observed as very high blood sugar—tons of nutrients in the bloodstream, but the cells along the street are starving and not doing well at all. This is the point where we identify most of our animal diabetics. The locked-out workers have formed such a raucous group in the street that they all decided to go down to the kidney and have a few drinks. (Let’s be honest—what would you do if you arrived at your job and couldn’t get in?) A joyous mob forms down at the kidney to celebrate this unexpected day off, and they overindulge. Some damage is incurred by the establishment, not to mention all the trash and bottles on Main Street. The police are working overtime, hauling these troublemakers away day and night. Here’s where pet owners can observe that something is obviously very wrong. Their dog or cat is urinating all the time, trying to remove that useless blood sugar from the body. If only there were more keys (or more locksmiths), this never would have happened.

Untreated diabetics get very, very sick. This illness can’t get better on its own. The businesses on Main Street eventually give up on obtaining energy through legitimate means and have to try other strategies for survival. Those strategies are abnormal and unsavory; they shift your pet’s illness into overdrive, something that could kill him. Some patients will exhibit a collapsed, crouched posture while trying to get around the house, while others move straight to extreme nausea and lethargy. Rescuing these pets, if it is possible, requires a very expensive hospital stay and a lot of time away from home. If only there were more keys, or more locksmiths.

Dr. M.S. Regan