Christmas time is here

It is really nice so see that she is doing so well now.  I think we've come to the last of the antibiotics.  She is a furry as a bear this December. What a great Christmas present it would be to be off the antibiotics and back to normal.  

I think it s pretty great that she gets to graze in the pasture in December.  I remember growing up in Nebraska and having to ride my horse in about six feet of snow around this time of year.  Believe me, I hate snow and don't miss it one bit. 

The fashionista...well, pretty soon anyway

I have been riding a little bit but I still have to be careful.  If she works too hard her lip gets a little twisted. I goes away in an hour or two. My vet thinks that the bones at the surgery site still have to fuse better.  So if I only ride her at a walk, she does ok.  If this continues, I will have to go back to just hand walking her so that there is no pressure on any nerves.  She still has the mrsa bacteria and is on tons of antibiotics or should I say "antibiotic$$$$$$$$".  If she hadn't developed this bacteria from her surgery, we wouldn't be still fighting.  We would be in recovery.  Oh well,  what do you do.  I am in it this far, so I guess I will get through it eventually.  She still has a little trouble with the moisture level in  her eye so she is going to become quite the fashionista.  She wears the ugly eye cup mask 24/7 but, now, when I ride she will be wearing the fancy/shmancy race horse blinkers that "The Finish Line of Oklahoma" is making for me.  These blinker masks are made for race horses and come in any color, design, material, logo, and blinker color that you could imagine.  Her mask will have smoke colored lenses that will cover her eye completely and act as sunglasses.  I am ordering a lens for each eye so that there is some mental symmetry as well as aesthetic value.  She is going to look so cool.  This will help keep her eye from drying out when we ride and offer her some protection from the dust and junk in the air.  I can't wait to get it. Watch for pictures.  And don't ask me how much the mask is going to set me back.  It is pricey but I think it is worth it.

a long and winding road..........

Another bottle of antibiotics and I am hopeful that we can finally kick this mrsa.  I actually doubt that it is going to be that easy but I can try to think positively.  Her infection is not getting in the way of your 15 minute rides.  The last couple of times I was able to just hop on  with the hackamore and no saddle.  She didn't take a misstep or act silly in any way.  There doesn't seem to be any neurological damage and she  goes along just like she did before.  Her ears work, her eye blinks, and she is making more tears every day. I still have her wearing her mask with the plastic cup over her eye just as a precaution.  We only put ointment in her eye once a day, too.  Now, she stands there without a halter or lead rope and lets me cram my whole finger into her eye.  Before it took an act of congress to get her to let us do that.  Nothing seems to hurt anymore so she is a little less skittish when I handle her.  I think we are at the end of worrying about the temporohyoid osteoarthroapy. We are only working on the infection now and that will take a while to clear up.  I will keep posting to this blog to let you know what may happen in the long run.  So, check back periodically and I will keep writing.  This has been a long and horrible road that I have been traveling.  At this point with her recovery, this far, I am glad that I saw it through because I have my horse back.

'nuff said

October 12, 2011

Not the greatest posture but nevertheless, riding!

the waiting game.......

This week she has been experiencing some sore feet.  We have her back on some meds to help with that.  I am concerned about what I call the "F" word for horses. I would hate to get this far only to have her founder.  That would suck.  She seems o.k. today, though.  Last week she was pretty lame.  Today she was trotting around the bull pen.  We  will keep watching and praying.  Her eye looks great and her infection is slowly getting smaller.  This is a tough infection to beat.  It really takes long term antibiotics to kick it.

things remain the same.......

Everything is pretty much the same.  She is on tons of antibiotics and we are just waiting and waiting.  So, nothing new right now.  The condition of her eye goes back and forth from dry to moist.  So we keep sticking ointment in her eye and she continues to wear her mask to help keep the area around her eye humid so that her eye doesn't require as many tears.  I hope she will make more tears so that this problem goes away.

point of view......

It all depends on perspective.  If you look at the little princess from this side she is ready to go for a long ride or have a nice bath.

From this side you can see the ointment in her sore eye and her still drooping lip.  Her ear looks pretty good, though.  As soon as we can clear up the infection under her jaw these signs SHOULD disappear.

The saga continues.............

On Tuesday, she received the first of her IV treatments for the bacterium that she is harboring.  There isn't much change.  We have been squirting a betadine solution up into the hole that is draining and the pressure from that caused her eye to go south again.  It was dry and milky white.  That was a scare.  We started putting ointment in her eye and put her special mask back on to see it that would help.  Today her eye seemed super.  She is more comfortable and her eye isn't so white.  I hope we can sustain this  until we get this infection cleared up.  We just have to be more gentle when squirting the medicine in the hole under her jaw.  The saga continues...............

the four letter word..........

Well, the cultures finally came back on her infection.  She has MRSA.  Great....  She is rapidly becoming the six-million dollar horse.  We will try another medicine and then resort to an I.V. treatment once a week for three weeks.  I think the "cow" medicine has been working better than anyone knows because I can see a difference.  I will let my vet be the judge, though.  I just don't understand why this keeps going and going and going.    This is getting old.  I hope we see the end of this soon. I am very tired.

ups and downs......

Today she looked much better.  Her eye didn't seem as sore and it looked moist.  Her infection is still there and we are still treating it with the "cow" medicine.  I don't know what it is called but it is used to treat lactating cows.  (I figure it's some kind of a non-penicillin medicine since dairy cows can't be given penicillin.)
  I find that kind of funny because her nickname is "Cow."  Not that she acts like a cow, it is just something silly Eddie Murphy said in the movie, Mulan, where he calls her horse a cow.  It cracked me up and I started calling her, "cow."
I am hopeful that this medicine will stop the infection.  There is not that much change in the knot under her cheeks, but it isn't any worse.  ....silver lining?

sigh..............

Today her eye looked a little dry and cloudy and she was blinking it with her third eyelid a lot.  That kind of made me cry.  I am so tired of her not feeling well.  I am tired of her struggling to get better.  She still has a stinking staff infection under her chin and we are still treating it with SMZs and a new medicine that we jam up into the little hole under her chin where the infection is trying to drain.  It is a medicine for dairy cows and I hope it works because the alternative would be IV treatments twice a week. $$$$$ If I had any savings, it would be far gone by now. And retirement, you say,  well that is just myth now.  I will take me years to pay everything off.  I guess I am just a little depressed right now.  My only "happy place" outlet was riding my horse now that is on hold and my "happy place"  ain't so happy right now. It is just work and worry. :(

a crystal ball.......

Looking into the future I am now wondering what kind of gear to ride in.  I have always used a low port curb bit with a copper roller but with the arthritis in her jaw bone joint, I don't think that this is a good choice for the future.

 I remember that right before this all happened, she wouldn't come straight over to get her bit in her mouth like she used to.  I had to follow her around in her stall until she put her head in the corner.  That was a sign that I didn't pick up.  Chewing on her hoof and on her water barrel was a little out of character for her too.  That was another sign.  I have never been able to touch her ears so that wouldn't have told me anything, although I can rub all over her ears now and she doesn't care. I remember that she used to rub her eye gently on my shoulder in the past few weeks before everything went south.  I don't think I realized that she was using my shoulder to help her to close her eye.  You see, when I would look at her face I wouldn't have thought to check to see that she wasn't closing her eye. I also knew when I was riding that she had trouble setting her head and moving into the bit.  She preferred to hold her head a little higher than she used to. I just attributed it to the lack of keeping her in show condition.  I figured that as long as she was happy and enjoying the ride, that I could put up with a little imperfection in her headset.  Who knew?  All of this stuff by itself is nothing and altogether it is still nothing. There is no way I could see this coming.  And who includes a skull x-ray in a vet check on a 4 year old horse.  She is 16 now and no one would have ever seen this coming.  The sad thing is that you never know if and why your horse may develop something like this.  You can only treat it (or not) if it does happen.  I am blessed to have a horse that I can ride again.  I don't know if you will.  I am told that I caught this early even though it was pretty devastating even in its early stages.   Perhaps we will still be able to ride off into the sunset yet.  I guess we are going to have to do it in a mechanical hackamore, though.  ;)

It is finally over.......

The horse ophthalmologist came and took the lavage system out of her eye and put her on five more days of ointments in her eye......  >:-(  I wasn't happy about that.  She is so sick of being messed with and I am sick of messing with her.  I want her to just be a horse again.  As of Friday, we will be officially finished with all that we have done for her.  Her ear is moving again, her lips are in the right spots, she blinks and is making tears.  It has been a very long, tiresome, and stressful journey.  I have shed more tears than I would like to admit.  I have been angry with all the treatments that are required to get through this.  I can't even tell you how I am feeling right now.  I should be happy, joyful and excited, but I am not.  I am so stressed about all that I have gone through that I don't know how to feel.  I keep waiting for something else because I am a pessimist.  I am glad that we made it through but it has been a tremendous amount of work.  I am looking forward to getting a night's sleep and getting back to a normal life as a horse owner. I will write more later because I have to get up at 4 a.m. to get ready for work and to get up the hill to give her medicine so that I can get back down the hill and to work on time.

Standing on third waiting to steal home......

I don't know who among you has gone through this "thing" with a horse and I don't know if her recovery time has been this side of miraculous but amazing things are going on with Miss Truffles.  Her ear rotation is almost 100% and her eye closes about 90%. and her abscess is healing beautifully.  My vet is so pleased.  The funniest thing happened yesterday.  When I arrived to give her the medicine, she sniffed my arm.  Sounds normal, right. But understand that she actually sniffed my arm like a dog might sniff your pant leg after you patted another dog.  It seemed so strange. I wonder if she had lost her ability to smell things in this ordeal.  If she did, she got that sense back.  I talked to my friend and she said that Truffles had done the same thing to her.  She gave her arm a very long sniff as though she had never smelled anything before.
Her sagging lower lip is back to normal and the twist in her top lip is pretty much gone. This silly horse is ready to run and kick up her heals and is being a little naughty on her walks.  I would love to turn her out with a good set of splint boots on and let her kick up her heals but she still has that lavage system in her eye.  The horsey ophthalmologist is coming out next week to see if she is making enough tears to take it out.  We are all very excited with her recovery.
Today, I am glad that we did all this to save her.  It is expensive and I am going to have to spend a long time paying off everything but I think, in the end, I will get a healthy horse out if this.

Just one of the girls...

Today we all stood around the birch trees leaning on the tractor and chatting (Truffles included).  She stood  there with us without her special face mask while we observed her in a regular setting.  She closed her eye -all the way- and turned her ear towards us as we all talked.  She swiveled her ear a bit, back and forth, while she listened for sounds around her.  It wasn't a full swivel but it was pretty close.  She thought she was just chatting and hanging out.  She was perky and relaxed and acted like she felt just fine.

I am excited that my vet will be out on Wednesday to see what he thinks.  I think he will be pleased. We sure are!!!  I thanked my friend for all that she has done.  I hope she knows that, without her help, I don't think we would have gotten this far.  I don't know how far we have to go but the progress is pretty good so far.

Somebody thinks they're special...

Today my farrier finally got the o.k. from the vet to put her shoe back on.  Not only did he put her shoe back on, but he used epoxy to fix the jagged edges where she tore her other shoe off.  He gave her lightweight aluminum shoes with little clips on the sides to help keep the shoe on this time.  He put some shiny stuff on her hoof that looks like she got a pedicure.  It really looks fantastic! So, now, we can't even live with her.  I took her out for her little evening walk and she was prancing around like a circus pony.  You have to understand how much this silly horse loves getting shoes.  It is almost human.  I think she was even looking at them in her reflection on the side of my truck.

It was so good to see her personality shine, once again.  We poke and prod her and squeeze her and squish her and it is a wonder that she doesn't just take us out.  I am thankful for her special personality.

My friend and I have probably stabbed the needles into our own flesh as many times as we have managed to get it dead center into the catheter tip as she dances around and up and down.  It is the grace of God alone that keeps us from emptying the syringe into our own beat-up hands.

So the quarter crack was inconsequential and the abscess is healing with the help of some SMZ's (medicine).  Her eye has tons of movement but she still needs the lavage and the treatments.  We would rather do that than try to muscle her down to put ointment in her eye (she won't let us do that).  My vet is pleased with her progress and I am cautiously optimistic.

This is a good thing because tomorrow is the first day of school. (I started 2 days ago but those were prep days)  The little kids will be excited to get back to school.  I would be more excited if she had completely healed before all this, but God has it and it will happen in his time.

Blessings

Today there was some good news.  My vet really liked how her eye was coming along. We still have the stitches in there and he will let me know when we will take them out.  I don't want to rush.  The quarter crack isn't as bad as I thought and is just superficial.  I am glad about that.

I started back to school today, just teacher work days without the students yet and I am getting up at 3:30 am to make sure that I can get ready for work, get up to the ranch, medicate and love on my horse, get back down the hill, and make it to work on time.  It might be a little rough but I feel that it is worth it in the long run.

I don't know what I would do if it weren't for my friend who has been helping me so much with her medication.  I really believe that her eye would not be as healthy as it is without her constant attention when I am at work.  She takes the late night shift which is more than I could even expect of anyone.  She is such a BLESSING to me.

Still sitting and waiting

Today we noticed that there was a lot more movement in her eye.  I am not sure if she can close it all the way yet so I'm not going to get too excited and have the stitches removed only to have to put them back in again.  So we will just play along for a while.

Her incision from her surgery has an abscess that opened today.  That is probably o.k.  We are just packing warm compresses under  her halter and helping it to drain away all the gunk.

It is Sunday and I don't want to have the vet rush out so we are going to play this one by ear.

(as my sis pointed out to me, it is Saturday not Sunday.  Every day blends into the other.  I am lucky I remember my own name......)

I also noticed a huge quarter crack in her hoof where she lost her shoe.  I guess the farrier will be coming out to fix that, too.............

Are we there, yet?

For the last few days we have been injecting her medicines into the lavage catheter and she seems to be feeling a little better.  She still hates getting the medicine and gives us a lot of grief about it but we just keep on doing it.  She seems to be hanging in there.  There are no significant changes in either direction so I am hopeful that we are on the right road here.  Her eye looks ok, everything is still droopy, but she eats, drinks, and poops like she should.  She enjoys her walks and all the attention, except for the treatments.  We are on the long boring road right now asking, "Are we there, yet? Are we there, yet?"

The glass is half full....

Today the horsey ophthalmologist came out to sew her eyelid shut again.  This time he only closed it about two-thirds of the way leaving her a little peek-hole near the tear duct part of her eye.  She is making a tiny bit of tears but not enough to help her corneal ulcers heal.  The big one that is left is actually healing no matter how bad I think it looks.  We switched her to a more tolerable pain killer that won't have such an impact on her kidneys.  I would hate to heal everything and destroy her kidneys with pain meds and then have to put her to sleep.

I have to have a new attitude about my horse now and it is to think about her only as a horse with an eye problem not this incredible problem that I STILL cannot spell without looking it up.  I really don't want to know either. I just want it to be a thing of the past that other people's horses go through, not mine.

So, even though her ear doesn't move, her lip is a little crooked and droopy and her eye is sewn shut, I will look at the glass as half full.  She will never be the halter mare that she once was and I will never breed her (passing on this gene).  I am going to love her with all of her faults and quirks.  Please keep praying that she leaves her lavage appliance alone so that we can get this healed.

Again.............

Well, she tore out the IV catheter in her lavage system AGAIN.  I had to have my vet out AGAIN to fix it.   I am probably going to have to have her eye sewn shut AGAIN because her blink reflex is not good enough to keep her eye moistened.  I don't think she is making any tears yet. Her eye closes about half way and the top part is getting moistened by all the medicines that we are shoving into the system.  The bottom part of her eye is still too dry and she can't close it enough to let the medicines cover it.

I think I owe every vet in the area a ton of money.  I am a teacher and I don't make a lot of money.   There are going to have to be some tough decisions made in the next month.  I have, honestly, spent nearly $10,000 on this so far.  I say spent but it is more like "charged" and I am making payments to the vets that will take them.

It may come down to just giving up and having her eye removed.  This one large expense may be cheaper than trying to save her eye.  We could go through all this and still have to remove it anyway.

I am so tired. This is so stressful.  I don't know what to do and no one can advise me because no one knows.  Her eye could be better in a day, a week, six months, a year, or never.  Be prepared for this if you have to go through this.    Her eye is in a terrible amount of pain and we are doing EVERYTHING that we can to get through this.

If anyone has dealt with this, I could sure use some help. Please tell me your experience with all of this.  I am holding onto my last thread of hope.

Two steps forward, one step back

We had to put the lavage system back into her eye.  Even thought her eye looks terrible, it is healing.  She had such bad corneal ulcers and we had such a hard time getting the medicine into her eye that this is just going to be easier.  The wonderful horse ophthalmologist came out and took very good care of us.  He was able to get everything all taken care of and reassured us.  Now we have all the little medicines in a row and can get the stuff in her eye through the little line instead of trying to cram a metal tube of ointment into her very sore eye.  She is still eating like a pig and drinking well.  Her ear is a little bit off and her bottom lip is still a little bit droopy but she looks good and is gaining the weight back from her hospital stay.  They fed her but she wasn't able to eat very well so she lost some weight.

When I get to the end of this blog, someday,  I will try to recount some of the things that now lead me to know that she was showing me signs for quite a while.  She did little things that were not really "stand-outs"  but now mean something.  I will hold back on these signs and such until the end because I don't want you to think that just because you horse does one of these little things, it isn't necessarily a definite sign that something is wrong.

Good night for now.

Prayer and time

She hates getting medicine in her eye.  The vet says her eye looks good but I think it looks terrible. It is red and angry and cloudy all at the same time.  He is coming out tomorrow to see if the ointments are doing their jobs.  If not, the lavage goes back into her eye.  The horsey eye doctor will come to the ranch to put it back in so she won't have to go back into the trailer and back to San Luis Rey hospital.  My sister has me on every prayer list that she can come up with.  I need those prayers.  Please join her and give us a shout out to God for some miracle healing here.

Sometimes disasters are a blessing in disguise

My real vet came to see Truffles today.  He was there to either repair or remove the lavage system.  When he took off her mask, he noticed that her eyelid was moving!  That was a great thing!  That means she could probably blink now.  It was a true blessing from God!  I was not holding much hope in a speedy recovery as I am an eternal pessimist. He gave her a "la la" shot and had to give her another because she was still too wiggly for removal of stitches in the eye.  Here is a lovely shot of her using the wall to hold herself up.

Too many happy shots

My vet removed the stitches in her eye and she actually blinked! Not once, but twice. Then he took the staples out of the underside of her head and the incision was clean and very nicely healed.  When she finally "came to," I gave her her favorite mush to eat and a lovely warm-water bath.  See how much better her lip looks in this shot.  It still tweaks a little from time to time.

much perkier now

See my lip?  It's getting better

 Now we have to wait to see if she is making any tears to lubricate her eye. Right now we are having to put ointments and such into her eyes on the same regiment as before.  I hope she makes tears soon because she really hates  being messed with.

So as upset as I was over the torn tubing, yesterday.  It all worked out for the better because we got to remove the whole thing from her eye.  Funny thing was the 2 corneal ulcers were healing nicely but the lavage system was causing another.  This may not be the case for all lavage systems, just her situation.

I am gaining some hope that we will conquer this problem and that I will get my riding horse back.  I think it will take a while before I can ride her. My vet will tell me when he thinks it is safe to do so and I will ask for assurance that this thing is solved and that nothing will "grow back" or anything like that.

Add another log to the fire, we're gonna be here a while

This evening she decided to break the tubing for her lavage system in her eye.    It just keeps getting piled deeper, doesn't it.  I am waiting for the horsey ophthalmologist to call back to tell me how to tell my vet how to fix it.  I am not sure if it is worth fixing or not.  I have a ton of questions about this.   It is in place so that we can treat the corneal ulcers in her eye from not being able to blink for a time as this condition began to rear its ugly head.  So have these ulcers healed sufficiently enough in the 2+ weeks that the system has been in her eye to warrant taking out the lavage system.  I can see keeping her eye sewn shut to help until she can blink again but I don't know about the eye system. We are running the risk that she could damage her eye with it in. Especially if she keeps breaking it.  I hope someone has some answers for me by morning.  I won't sleep because I will let this bother me all night.

...an even sunnier evening

I just wanted to add in a little bit more from this evening.  I went to the ranch to give her the 6:00 p.m. medicine and I noticed that her lip was a little straighter.  Her ear is still a little frozen and that bottom lip hangs a bit on the side but I will take any small improvement.  I am not saying that I won't go back in the morning to find her lip crooked again but I will take this small blessing for this evening and deal with the troubles of tomorrow when and if they come.

A sunnier day

Truffles was a little perkier today.  She still requires medicine to be injected into the lavage system in her eye. We have to do this 4 times a day... every 6 hours.  It is a blessing that I have a wonderful friend who is helping me and I am still on summer break. I don't know what I will do when school starts... :(  I don't want to think about that now.
Truffles tried to trot along on our walk this morning.  I thought that was great. Her face is still droopy but she is able to eat her alfalfa and her mush that we make from Integrity Senior Horse food. She likes it very much, or should I say "very mush!"
My regular vet will be back by the end of the week so I can't wait to ask him about all this eye medicine and how long we will have to squirt it into the system.  I think the medicine is for the corneal ulcers and I don't know how long those take to heal.  I know her eye will stay sewn such until she can get her blink back. I wonder if her eye will stay moistened without having the lavage system in there.  I will have to wait to answer that question.
In my 40 years of owning horses, I have never heard of such a thing as she is going through (I still can't pronounce it or spell it without looking) and neither have my friends.
This is the reason I am journaling this long process.  If you must endure this I hope that this blog will give you help and comfort. I don't know how long this is going to take but I expect ups and downs and a very lengthy blog. If you are reading this and have had to deal with this, I would love to hear from you.

a long row to hoe............

You can sort of see the lavage system that is sewn INTO her eye.  The tube allows us to inject the medicine into her eye without getting too close to it.  You can see her droopy and swollen lip from this angle. I'm sure she is in better condition that other horses with this "thing" but it is still hard for me to deal with.  She is eating, drinking, and pooping which are the essentials for a pretty healthy horse so I guess I should be counting my blessings.  ...more later.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch.....

Well, we brought her home from the hospital yesterday.  It has been really hard on her because they had us stop all the pain meds so that her kidneys wouldn't suffer.  It has been really hard on all of us because she has to have medicine every 6 hours and my dear friend is taking the midnight shift for me.  I feel guilty about that. She figures that since she lives there it would be easier for her than for me because I would have to drive up the mountain in the middle of the night.  She is such a blessing to me.  I am taking the early morning and the dinner time shift.  Poor Truffles really doesn't feel well.  I know that she is in pain because she isn't being a PAIN.  She is a people horse and is usually in everyone's business and now she just stands there.  We are taking her for walks and trying to figure what method of feeding would work best for her.  Sarina finally decided to soak her hay in a tub and that has made it much easier for her to eat it.  She is getting soaked alfalfa pellets with some Integrity Senior food with molasses.  She likes that better than the other senior feed because it has smaller pieces in it which are easier to chew.  She broke her halter by hooking it on her stall. We usually never keep a halter on a horse but her eye protection mask is attached to it and there is just no other way. She has an irrigation system sewed into her eye because she still cannot blink.   I got a halter today that did not have any hooks on it and that should help. My leather halter is too close a fit to be comfortable on the staples under her jaw.

Sometimes I get really depressed and wonder if I am putting her through unnecessary pain and suffering.  I just look at how pathetic she is. I know she is hurting.  I keep getting reassurance that she will heal but I am such a pessimist that I struggle with that much faith.  I will feel better when my regular vet comes back from his vacation in Wyoming.  Then, I will know if I am doing the best for my little girl.

I sure could use some encouraging words from anyone who has dealt with this.  I feel very alone and am suffering right along with my horse.  Dealing with a problem that I cannot even pronounce.  :(

This week

Every day she seems to be improving.  Her eye is still sewn shut  until she can blink and make tears again.  Her swelling has reduced and she has been able to keep her tongue in her mouth.  She hates the mushy stuff that they are giving her  and still has trouble with her lips being askew which makes it hard for her to pick up the food well.  I gave her a "cookie" and she was able to chew it up on the left side of her mouth.  I got permission to sprinkle so equine senior food on the mush and she was eating it.  (She is a princess, you know)  I caught this early, which is fortunate for me.  I didn't wait around to make a decision to have the surgery.

I can't speak for everyone and cannot even imagine all the situations that you may be going through. I am writing this because my precious princess is going through something terrible that I didn't even know existed; I can't even pronounce it; and I hope to tell you what I am going through day by day to help you.  that she will recover and I will keep you posted in case you have to deal with this terrible thing.

Day 2

I cheerfully hopped out of my truck and almost skipped to her stall ( I'm a little old to be skipping ;) ).  I just happened to look as the stall door and noticed that a different halter was hanging on the door.  I looked at the helper and I could see the look on his face and I knew there was something wrong.  He told me that she was "over there."  I tried to talk to myself and say that she was probably getting an x-ray or a bath or a walk or SOMETHING! ...that nothing was wrong.  I walked into the barn and I almost dropped.  She was spinning around in the stall, her tongue was hanging completely out of the side of her extremely swollen mouth and foam and slobber were everywhere.  Two people were working on affixing the IV bags to her and there was the most horrible smell EVER coming from the stall.  That was it for me.  I started crying pretty much hysterically.  Everyone was busy, no one would tell me what was going on.  There were other surgical emergencies and the main vet was tied up in the surgery area.  I thought my horse was dying and there was no one to tell me what was going on.  I called everyone of my friends and my husband and asked them to come to stay with me.  Someone finally came to talk to me (seemed like a year later, but it wasn't).

It seems that the second day after the surgery is the worse.  I think someone told me that but I couldn't hear them.  I was too messed up over all of this.    Everyone was finally out of the stall and it was just Truffles and me.  It seems that the swelling was causing her to not be able to retract her tongue, she was only spinning around because she was scared of all the commotion with the gigantic bags of stuff and the terrible smell was the DMSO that they had in one of the IVs.  If you know what DMSO is, you understand.  I think I can still taste it.

Surgery day

The surgery that she needed was one to remove a portion of the hyoid bone to relieve the pressure on the nerves that would save her life.  I am not a vet so I don't understand why, when, where or anything about the reason for going to another bone to fix a different area so I am going to have to trust that they know what they are doing.   I don't even know if I am spelling anything right so please bear with me.  I had to wait to go to see her because I didn't know what time they were going to operate on her so I went to a local restaurant to wait until visiting hours.  I really didn't want to eat but I knew it would upset my husband if I didn't.  I hurried and ate and found myself wiggling my foot in anticipation of his finishing his meal.  I love my husband but I wanted to jump up and grab him by the shirt and shake him, screaming, 'COME ON, LET'S GET OVER THERE!"  He is a great man and knew that there was nothing I could do by pacing around in front of her empty stall making myself sick.  When we finally arrived, she was standing in her stall looking, of course, drugged but she recognized me right away and nickered to me.  I spent some time loving her up and promising cookies and long walks when she came home in 5 days.  5 days...nope, it wasn't going to be that easy.

What???

The doctors at San Luis Rey x-rayed Truffles skull and brought me into the office to see what was going on.  I knew that the minute she asked to have the "owner" sit down ( as I had brought a contingency with me for support) that this would not be good.  They showed me the x-ray and it looked like there was a golf ball inside her head around the area of her eye.  I didn't hear much after that.  I was pretty upset.  I heard words like surgery, euthanasia, dangerous and no other choice.  My beautiful little girl was not going home tonight.  I looked at my husband and prayed that he wouldn't see the price tag on all of this.  We are not rich, we just have a horse.  I don't know what I said or did or what a must have looked like at that moment but I went out side and called my vet.  My REAL vet; the one who has stood by my side through my trek with horses for the last 20 years.  He and I have a code.  He cannot advise me but he will always tell me what to do if it were "his horse."  He told me that there had been a ton of success with this surgery that they were proposing and without it she would just become an unpredictable and potentially dangerous horse.  The pressure of all the arthritis, and bone growth cause other bones to pinch off nerves and she could break the base of her skull just by whinnying to me.
I was toast then.  I couldn't think anymore.  It looked like my decision was to have the surgery or to put her down.  My husband made the decision for me.  She would have the surgery the next day and we would say goodbye to his credit card.

The journey through Temporohyoid osteoarthropathy

I don't even know how to begin.  I was blindsided with this horrible condition and I didn't even know it was coming.  As I think back, I can't really even come up with anything that may have indicated that she had anything wrong with her.  I rode her on a Friday, and by Monday we were at San Luis Rey Equine Hospital in the midst of a disaster.
Truffles is a 16.3 hand appaloosa with no spots (unless you shave her to the skin and look at her mottled skin.) Although I knew her since she was a baby, I didn't buy her until she was 4, when my other horse passed away.  She is a fabulous horse.  She is such a people-horse and will spend time with you as more of a friend than a horse.  I love how she side passes to me so that I can get on from a pipe stall or a log or anything.  It's like an invitation to mount up and let's go for a ride.
On Friday, she seemed a little less excited about taking a ride and I mentioned to my husband that she seemed a little off.  She had just gotten her new shoes (she loves new shoes and thinks they are from Nordstroms, shhh, don't tell her) and it was pretty hot out so I just dismissed is as environmental.  By Saturday night, she seemed a bit off (she is NEVER sick)  My wonderful friend, who keeps my horse at her house)  contacted the vet and did all the proper things for a potential colic.  But all her vital signs were normal.  By early Sunday morning she was not really any better so we called out the vet. (yep, Sunday emergency vet calls are so expensive.)  He examined her and noticed that her eye was a little droopy.  Her vital signs were still normal but he noticed she had a corneal ulcer.  She had torn off her shoe and we thought she might have gotten cast in her stall and scratched her eye.  She had been mouthing her coronet band like it itched or hurt or something so the vet thought she might have an abscess.  He tubed her and gave her some fluids and some oil.  We got some ointment for her eye, wrapped her hoof and gave her a nice bran mash.  I hand walked her three times a day from Sunday morning to Monday afternoon to get things moving.  My Monday afternoon she seemed a little better.  I put her on the cross-ties to change her hoof wrap and then I saw it.  The entire side of the right side of her face was very swollen and her lips were weird.  The top lip pointed oddly to the left,  the right side of her lower lip was drooping about an inch and a half lower than normal and the top of her mouth was very swollen.  It looked like she had a golf ball in her mouth.
We immediately called my usual vet and had him come out.  He knew immediately what I was dealing with and loaded my horse in the trailer and we went off to San Luis Ray Equine Hospital.  If it was good enough for Seattle Slew, it was a good enough place for me!  I knew they would get to the bottom of this and we'd be home with some medicine by that night! Right?????????????