Diagnosis definitions...

This post is meant to familiarize everyone with what pancreatitis, colitis and diabetes really mean.

Pancreatitis
(from http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pancreatitis/DS00371 and http://www.petdiabetes.com/pdorg/pancreatitis.htm)


Pancreatitis means inflammation of the pancreas. The pancreas produces enzymes that help digestion and hormones that help regulate the way your body processes sugar (or glucose). The inflammation can become severe, and the digestive enzymes that are normally inactive can become active and these enzymes then can cause damage to the pancreas. This causes a cycle of increasing inflammation. The vet thinks Buzz has chronic pancreatitis, or essentially scar tissue has formed in his pancreas, which in turn decreases the ability of his pancreas to function properly, and therefore diabetes can (and did) result.




Colitis
(from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colitis and http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/ulcerative-colitis/DS00598/DSECTION=symptoms)


Colitis refers to an inflammation of the colon and is often used to describe an inflammation of the large intestine (colon, caecum, and rectum). We think this is a separate medical condition than the pancreatitis/diabetes. This may be one of the causes that his diabetes got so out of control, though.




Diabetes Mellitus
(from the American Heart Association, http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4546)


Diabetes is a disease in which the body doesn't produce or properly use insulin. Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas. Insulin is needed to turn sugar and other food into energy. Buzz doesn’t make enough insulin because of the scarring of his pancreas. This causes sugars to build up too high in his blood. Diabetes mellitus is defined as a fasting blood glucose (or the blood glucose when Buzz isn't eating) of 126 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or more.


To give you an idea of how bad Buzz's diabetes is/was, these are his glucose readings since we picked him up on Thursday night, December 9, 2010. Please keep in mind that after each reading, we administered the proper amount of insulin - usually after texting the internal specialist to get his thought on how much insulin to give (humulin-r initially, then switched to humulin-n after the second reading on Sunday, each was measured in mg/dL)


Friday: 485 at 12:30pm, 260 at 5:00pm, 574 at 10:50pm
Saturday: 484 at 9:40am, 430 at 3:00pm, 541 at 10:10pm, 458 at 12:10am
Sunday: 556 at 8:40am, 599 at 3:00pm, 178 at 7:30pm
Monday: 517 at 8:30am, 452 at 8:30pm
Tuesday: 248 at 8:00am, 610 at 10:00pm
Wednesday: 417 at 9:45am, 413 at 7:45pm
Thursday: 720 at 9:45am, 377 at 8:00pm
Friday: 307 at 7:45am, 695 at 8:40pm
Saturday (today): 203 at 8:15am