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.