You really have my sympathy --and empathy. My cat is a survivor of diabetic ketoacidosis -- at the same time as DKA (it was in 2008) he had pancreatitis, liver damage and a urinary tract infection. Someone said he was as sick as a cat can get and still live.
DKA is a very complicated condition, the treatment is like a balancing act It sounds like your e vet is a good one that both knows what they are doing and is really trying to work with your budget. I feel for you so much that you need to bring him home while still ill -- I was fortunate enough to be able to leave him there some more days -- but I know of people who have been in your position and pulled their cat through it.
Do you know how to test for ketones at home? you can get test strips that test for both glucose and ketones. Ketodiastix. They're just the same that humans use, you can get them at a pharmacy without prescription. I used to do the test by putting plastic wrap over the litter and trying to catch it right after he went and dipping the stick into a puddle (if you do it that way you do have to do it soon after he goes for it to be accurate, otherwise the ketones can evaporate). Later i found amazingly i was actually able to hold the stick in the urine stream while he was peeing. i had seen other people say they did it like that but i did not think my cat would put up with it. but it turned out he did not mind.
Anyway this can be very helpful for a cat prone to ketones so you can have some idea what is going on.
Another thing -- have you ever given sub-q fluids? Ask them about that and if they can show you how and you can get a bag and a line and needles to take home, because that can help flush the ketones out if he should become ketotic again. Just as an example, not long ago my cat seemed like he didnt feel so good I tested urine and it showed some ketones -- trace to small. that was still low enough I could try to treat at home. I made sure he ate. and i gave him fluids, and thank God by morning he was showing no ketones.
oh -- here is another thing. For a much more up to the minute picture of what is going on with ketones, there is the Precision Ultra meter which can test either blood glucose or blood ketones (uses 2 different kind of test strips) Maybe it might be something to check out for the future; sometimes you can find meters for almost free or even free with rebates. The ketone test strips are not easy to find in stores though, you need to order them, and it's about $10 per test. So it's not a test I would run all the time but it can be very helpful when deciding if the cat needs to go to the vet.
I also regularly monitor my cat's blood glucose at home. That might sound kinda overwhelming at first but almost every cat and every human can learn to do this. My cat jumps up for his test because he is bribed with dried salmon treats.
Home blood glucose testing just makes sense, after all human diabetics are told to do it. Many vets now recommend this because it can give them so much more data and testing cats at home in their normal environment means more reliable numbers -- at the vet, cats' BG numbers can be thrown off by stress. This can both help regulate your cat and can really save you money on getting BG curves done at the vet.
Re feeding your kitty with the tube, on Yahoo Groups there is a Feline assisted feeding group that you might find very helpful.
And for tons of info and support in dealing with your cats diabetes, check out the Feline Diabetes Message Board.
http://www.felinediabetes.com/FDMB/
To learn more about ketoacidosis, here is a very helpful page including links
http://petdiabetes.wikia.com/wiki/Ketoacidosis
And here is a paper from a vet conference that goes into detail about the treatment of DKA. I found this extremely helpful in understanding what the vet team was doing -- and it reassured me that they were doing what was recommended here.
http://www.vin.com/proceedings/Proce...1549&O=Generic
Hang in there, you are absolutely wonderful friends and caretakers of your cat. and you will be so happy the day you see him playing again. I know how I felt!
Witch is why he is still on the kibble. I can't find a non pate good wet food for him and I still need the abosolute 100% go ahead for a all raw diet.
As of 10:30 am my time Thay called to ask what kind of feeding tube I wanted. He is refuseing to eat still and he is not getting enough when they are seringe feeding him. I hated haveing to make a decision based on money but if he needs more days in there I wanted to make sure we had enough to cover it. We chose the cheeper non sergery tube though the nose.
