I didn't realize that anyone actually read this blog, so I quite posting to it. After receiving a comment about an update, I realized that it may be helpful to someone.
So here is the post I placed on the forum on 2/9/08:
Well, the surgery to take out J's eye was done on Tuesday. I took him to Gainesville on Monday with the help of our board buddy FastTracker. She is awesome as usual. The surgery went really well to remove the atrophied blind eye. He came home Wednesday.
He has been running, bucking, and jumping. He is on twice a day meds for while. Banamine for pain and inflammation. SMZs to fight infection. Gastrogard to keep the Banamine from eating his stomach up. He is not thrilled with the meds, but it is not nearly as bad as when he initially injured the eye.
The bandage came off last night. It looks really good. Too bad that it will actually sink in more than it is right now. At the moment, it is flush with the eye socket and just looks closed. All in all, I am pleased with the outcome and I think once the sutures are out, he will be feeling much better. I will try to remember to snap some pictures tomorrow when I am out there.
While he is recuperating, I asked a friend if I could ride a sale horse she has that has not been ridden in 6 months. I thought it would satisfy my need to ride and sharpen him back up so that she can get more money for him. Never have I wanted a second horse. My horse has always been enough. After working with the little guy, I have fallen in love with him and want to get J a "brother". I am waiting to see if they change over my merit raise at work to a job reclassification. If they do that, the raise should be enough that I can afford to board a second horse.
So S is a registered full Arab. His registration papers say that he is black, but he is really dark bay. He has a stripe on the nose and four white fetlocks. He has been called an aloof nut job by people at the barn. He has just been misunderstood and out of work for too long. Since working with him, he has stopped the stall walking. He is very affectionate to me, very willing, and smart as a fox. I will keep you updated on how this goes.
So J should be back in riding shape in about 3 weeks. I can't wait to get him back under saddle. He has WAY too much energy to be on rest.
quote:
Originally posted by MiHorseGirl: a friend of mine had to have her horses eye removed. they put an orb or fake eyeball in and sewd it shut so there is something in his socket and it wont sink in. he is her speed horse and i think was back at it in 2-3 weeks. he acted like he had both eyes. good luck with your boy and the new one you get. i just aquired an arab and they are so sensitive, it takes special people to understand them.
I opted not to do the implant because there is a 50% rejection rate. He has been through so much and been such a great horse through it all. I did not want to take the chance that he would have to have another surgery to remove the prosthesis.
A general reply regarding his condition:
Thanks everyone! I don't really have to worry much about adjustment. He has been blind in that eye for a year, so our adjustment period is over. He does mildly shake his head every now and then like he is trying to figure out the weight difference.
A funny thing...when the bandage was still on, he was very frustrated and indicating to me that he could not see because we had put something over his eye. I Had to laugh because he has not been able to see out of it for all that time. I have no idea why he associated the bandage covering the eye socket as being his problem all of a sudden. What a silly!
A more current update as of 4/5/08:
J is back to full time work. He is doing AWESOME. He seems to feel much better and is paying more attention when I ride. He is actually getting his leads pretty consistently now.
I have bought a second horse and there seems to be no jealousy between them. The new horse is very green, but does have two eyes!!
Wednesday, January 2, 2008, 11:43 PM EST [General]
I posted this on the bulletin board under GCC:
I have made the final decision to have my horse's eye removed.
A little over a year ago, someone shot a fence post in the pasture that sent wood flying into several horses' eyes. They had different degress of injuries. Two horses had their eye removed at the time of the accident, three horses only had minor corneal abrasions that were treated with antibiotics. J had a piece of wood in his eye that caused a stromal abcess and a melting corneal ulcer. I was called at work to come to the barn to the news that my horse was blind in that eye with a very serious infection.
The wood was removed and I took off from work to treat the eye every 2 hours around the clock for 10 days. The medications were tapered off, but he did not come off the final pain/anti-inflammatory meds until the next April - almost 5 months later. We were successful in treating the infection and controlling the pain. He recovered very well and is completely adjusted to being blind on one side.
Now my dilemma...
The globe atrophied - which we expected. When it was 75% the size of the other eye, all was well. When it got a little smaller, it caused his eyelashes to turn down and on windy days, his eye watered. The vet said we could remove the eyelashes to make him more comfortable even though he showed no signs of pain. I just have to assume that if your eye waters, it must be uncomfortable. We were going to wait for cold weather to do the surgery.
Well, cold weather is here and the eye has atrophied to 50% normal size. I spoke to the vet about it because I felt like the shrinking process was not going to end. She agreed and agreed with my idea that it should be removed. I have been researching options for implants, etc for the last month. Fortunately, I had the time to really look into this because it was not an emergency enucleation. The vet and a friend have assured me that he actually is not experiencing any pain at this point. I just needed to do something that was more of a long term solution.
So I have spoken to several people and equine opthamologists that tell me that the implants are generally rejected by the horses' bodies. I am not going to put him through 2 surgeries. So the final decision is that the eye will be removed and no implant will be placed in the socket. I am not going to do the granular tissue bed to fill the void because I have seen 3 horses where owners paid for this procedure and the eye looks no different from the first post surgical week. It also requires packing and unpacking gauze and then a final stitching closed. Why put him through that.
As soon as I find out how much my income tax return will be, the surgery will be scheduled. If my return covers the vet bill, the surgery will be immediately. If it does not, then I will have to wait until the end of February for my bonus to supplement the bill.
If you bothered to read through this long story, thank you very much. I just needed to get it out and prepare myself mentally for removing his eye, muscles, tear ducts and eyelids. This will be much harder for me than him. He has adjusted to the blindness and will be on meds for pain that will keep him very comfortable. This has just been a really tough decision for me.
It has been so hot here lately. The last three days it has hit 80°F. My poor hairy horse has been so hot. Even with a trace clip, he has been so sweaty. Thank goodness we have a front coming in. So I am going from running my AC tonight to the heat by tomorrow night. We are supposed to have a low of 33° tomorrow night and 26° the next night. Radical difference, so we will be on colic alert again.
Two nights back, we had a close call with colic. Bloating, minimal gut noise, and an inverted respiration rate. He seemed okay otherwise. One of his buddies did not eat his feed, so we turned the two of them out together for the night. They needed the movement. Both boys were checked all night. Both of them had no further symptoms. I guess they just wanted to play outside all night.
Riding tonight was awesome. We put in a few trot miles. The lightning started up in the distance, so that made us have to go back to the arena to work in the event we needed to duck for cover. Arena work was great. Someone had set up cones for a pole bending type exercise. We used them to half pass back and forth down the line. J was such an awesome ride. You would never know that he could not see the cones on his right side at all. He goes where I tell his feet to fall.
Tomorrow, we are supposed to ride through the state forest to a bluff that overlooks the creek. I wish that I had one of the small digital cameras that were easy to take on a ride. I may just break down and take mine in a saddle pack. If I do, I will post pictures tomorrow. The weather is supposed to be wonderful with a high of 67°.
This time of year I feel like one that avoids natural light. By the time I can get to the barn, it is always dark. We had a wonderful ride tonight despite the dark.
The plan when I got to the barn was to do another moonlight ride. I find my tack room locked when I get to the barn and cannot get to any of my stuff. The barn manager was away...so I borrowed a halter off of a friend's stall and used two lead ropes like split reins. We headed across the field and my friend's horse got very nervous from the smell of smoke. I'm not sure if it was from the prescribed burn up the road or someone's fireplace. I cannot imagine it being a fireplace, it was 65°F out at 8pm.
With discretion being the better part of valor, we decided to go ride the mare pasture. The clouds moved and the fog started rolling in. With the moonlight on the fog and the trees in the background, it made for the most beautiful ride. Again, most of my ride was trotting/jogging because of the difference in our horses' strides.
I felt like the poster child for what not to do on horseback tonight. My son called me in the middle of the ride and was so excited about something that I just could not bring myself to tell him I had to hang up. So there I was...no saddle, no bridle, no helmet, riding in the dark and fog, and talking on the phone. I know I should know better, but I am just so pleased with my gelding's progress that I can do that. He has come such a long way from the spaz I bought almost 5 years ago.
We went for a moonlight ride tonight. Well...a night ride. Even though the moon is close to full, we had so much cloud cover that you couldn't see the moon. The ride was very nice. It was 60°F with relatively low humidity considering the clouds and rain we have had over the last few days. We rode out to a graveyard in the woods and back. It was only about an hour, but the friend I was riding with needed to get home to a teenager that had injured her foot earlier today.
I did some mileage in the pasture before the night ride. We put in about 3 trotting miles. The night ride was only about 2 1/2 miles. I ended up trotting a good bit of that because of the difference between the length of our horses' legs. So we ended up with a pretty decent conditioning work out tonight.
