March 29, 2021

Final Thoughts on the Aeres Medical Saga

Horses are fragile

I know this comparison is going to make me sad, and I'm doing it anyway.

 
November 2020. Someday she's going to look like this again!

You think you know this, and then you're suddenly slapped in the face with it like this and suddenly the reality of that statement sets in. One of the vets said horses' bodies are poorly suited to fighting off infection compared to other animals, which I've never thought about before, but it makes sense. There are probably fewer opportunities for a long convalescence as a prey animal than there are as a top-of-the-food-chain human, so humans have gotten the chance to evolve infection-fighting immune systems more completely. "They're just big, fragile, poorly designed animals in a lot of ways," the one vet said.

 

There's still much we don't know about equine medicine.

Me, age 5-ish, with Sammy, my family's first African Grey

After having African Greys for almost 30 years, I'm used to working within the constraints of incomplete veterinary understanding of my pets, following guidelines that are more "old wives tale" and "err on the side of caution" than published study because I don't have anything better to rely on. But I always thought horses were closer to dogs and cats on the animal science spectrum until this. I've never been told "I don't know" as many times with a horse as I was during this ordeal, and that's not a knock on the vets in any way, I appreciate the humility it takes to say that, but they really just did not know in many cases from start to finish with this. Even the amount of time she was on a feeding tube (2 weeks) was uncharted territory!


There are things much worse - emotionally and financially - than (successful) colic surgery.

Far, far less gory than it was a few weeks ago!

Obviously if your colic surgery ended tragically, there's nothing worse than that. But I spent my whole life thinking colic surgery was a worst case veterinary medicine scenario. Planning for it financially, holding it up in casual conversation as a big tragedy. But I found myself many times WISHING this was something as simple as colic surgery, something where, within a matter of minutes, you have a concrete diagnosis of a well-understood ailment, an action plan, a firm cost estimate, and you can take a big step  to fix it almost immediately.

Contrast that to what we went through: we don't know what caused this, we don't know how long it will take for her to leave the hospital, we don't really know how to fix it, we don't know how much this will cost. We'd authorize the bill through a certain amount, and they'd call a week later to get another authorization to continue, having used that amount up. We faced a situation where every day was a gamble, every dollar we spent was a bet placed that her nerves would come back to life before we got to the point we couldn't afford to keep her up there and alive anymore. The uncertainty was gut-wrenching in a way that I never thought was possible.


Pre-existing vet relationships are important.

Happy to be back at Lisa's, who is better set up for small pen turnout than I am

I am so grateful we had my new vet out for spring shots way earlier than we usually did this year, so he had just seen her two days before all this started. I used to do my own shots, back when that's what I could afford, but now I will cheerfully fork over the farm call fee to have my vet see my healthy animal once a year, just so I have someone to call in an emergency like this. And it has transformed my relationship with this vet for the better - nothing like trial by fire!


The list of people I would co-own a horse with is now up to two.

Lisa with Connor's stallion full brother, Cadence

I used to say Mary was the only person on the planet I could co-own a horse with, but after this experience I can confidently add Lisa to that list. We worked as a team throughout this entire thing, often making decisions together, but sometimes we both had to make decisions independently too. It meant a lot that she had that much trust in me, and that 11 years into our friendship, I know her well enough to read her mind and confidently authorize treatments even when I couldn't reach her to double check. Sometimes the way we arrived at a decision took different paths, but we always arrived at the same place regardless, and that was pretty cool.


There are differences between private practice hospitals and university hospitals, and now I know them.


Anyone who's read this blog knows Purdue had a big miss on this case, but they also saved her life. The downsides to a teaching hospital are the rotating cast of characters, (if your horse is there longer than one rotation) and the relative inexperience of the non-senior vets. The upside is that it's cheaper - I am not saying this was cheap by any means, but it was a heck of a lot cheaper at Purdue than Rood and Riddle would've been, and then the longer we were there, the harder they worked to find "teaching funds" for things like bloodwork to make our bill even a little smaller. Honestly, if she had been at R&R, our money might have run out before her ability to swallow came back, so being at Purdue may have saved her life in that respect. 


COVID-19 sucks.

Back home again at Lisa's

 

COVID-19 complicated every bit of this ordeal, from the hours I spent waiting in the truck, to peeing in my trailer, to not being able to see with our own eyes whether she was eating or not when they discharged her the first time. More than once when we both wanted to question the vets on whether something was or was not happening, I reminded Lisa that we did not have a choice but to trust them, because we weren't allowed to go see her. This virus can go to hell, and I can't wait to flip it the bird (and honor my healthy 49 year old CrossFit friend that died of it after contracting it while traveling for Thanksgiving) by signing up for my vaccination first thing Wednesday morning.


I am still not insuring Connor after all this.

 

I know, a lot of you probably think I'm crazy, and that's fine, insurance is 100% the right route for a lot of people. But if anything, this experience just validated my choice to self-insure (pay the amount I would be paying in premiums into a savings account every month), and I was grateful for the freedom we had to make decisions purely on what the vets said and how much we could afford, and not what insurance would/would not cover. I cannot deny that that is privilege, but it's also 11 years of planning ahead, prioritizing saving before spending every time I get paid, and being grateful that it was there when I offered to help defray some cost.

This wraps up the Aeres medical saga. Sorry for all the cliffhangers, but that's what my life felt like right alongside all you guys! I'll continue to post updates on her as I get them, but for now, her life is all about eating, gaining weight, and being a horse again.

25 comments:

  1. I'm SO glad she seems to have come out of the worst of it and was finally able to go home. What a relief! I am still sending all the virtual positive thoughts and hugs I can to you and Lisa, and everyone else involved, as I'm sure she has a long road of recovery left ahead of her!

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    1. Thank you, she does. She still struggles to swallow grass even though hay and grain aren't much of an issue, and she has a lot of weight to gain. Then after that we have the question of what kind of a riding horse will she be with less tongue, but that doesn't really matter that much, since she'll have a career as a momma one way or another. Still, long road ahead though.

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  2. I can honestly say she will get her cob frame back. Comrade filled out enough we had to cut back his food.
    COVID protocols killed us when Rosemary was at the vet. We only got to see her the day we put her down. So glad Aeres got to go home. Good to know your thoughts about insurance too.

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    1. Yeah, I felt so bad for you guys with that. What a strange diagnosis <3

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  3. I am so sorry about the loss of your friend. These are great take always. I came to realizations about people medicine after my daughter spent 2 weeks in hospital. We never did get a definitive diagnosis.

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    1. Wow! That's especially frustrating to have that happen in human medicine, although it makes sense, we don't know everything there is to know.

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  4. I completely agree on the "there are things worse than colic surgery". I always thought I had planned well for horses at home, knowing that I would not do colic surgery for either Phoenix or Stampede which meant they would not ever leave the property again. Then Stampede got sick and I spent thousands trying to diagnose the issue at home as my horse just continued to struggle - not bad enough to put down but not getting better either for many weeks. Obviously we know how that ultimately ended and I wouldn't have changed anything except I wish I had taken him to the vet hospital sooner.

    Interesting on the insurance - Ernie is my only insured horse and he does have both life and major medical. I mostly did it because for the next few years my budget to replace him would not be enough to find something suitable. I refuse to put strain on my financial life to have horses so I do also always keep a sizable chunk put away for medical bills and building back up for next horse. I was quite glad I had built that up when everything happened with Stampede and then again when I took a loss selling Maestro.

    There is a lot still unknown with horses and veterinary care for sure. One of my favorite things about my current vets is that they admit not only when they don't know, but also when they think their prior decision was possibly incorrect. In my case, we had put Stampede on dex for his hind leg scabs and the vet has admitted he feels that contributed to Stampede's EHV-5 going into overdrive - I definitely agree. He knows that I am adverse to using it (and similar drugs) now, and we discuss and tailor medication accordingly. Hence why Ernie got PRP in his back ankle instead.

    So glad there has been a good ending for Aeres.
    A good vet is worth their price. I do health exams twice yearly including physicals.

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    1. Yeah, insurance is such an intensely personal decision, and you're right to bring up replacement costs. Part of what factors into my decision is that my next horse is going to be a baby and I know where it's coming from (Connor's breeder), which is a lot different financial situation than what you've done the last couple times, buying something started and mature. If that was my situation, I'd think a lot harder about life insurance at the very least.

      Yeah, I appreciate that with vets too, yours sounds like a good one. I always say with my employees at work, I'd rather have a guy that made a mistake and learned from it than one that's never made a mistake, because the first guy is never going to make that mistake twice (and if he does, Id don't want him working for me!!). Being able to have the humility to admit when you screwed up and learned from it is extremely important to me in my vet relationships.

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  5. These are excellently summarized and written. I could not agree more after so many years of dealing with Tristan's vet weirdness, ESPECIALLY about having a regular vet out to see your healthy horse as baseline.

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    1. Thank you, yes you've certainly dealt with your own veterinary mystery diagnoses over the years!

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  6. I'm so glad everything is moving in the right direction for her. What a lucky mare to have caring owners to get her through all of this. That is an interesting point with insurance. Working in human medicine I can't tell you how frustrating it is to not be able to treat a patient the "correct" way because insurance denies it and they can't afford it out of pocket (because all their money goes to paying the ridiculous insurance premiums) so we have to come up with a plan B.

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    1. That must be heart wrenching for you to have to see, and yeah our human insurance system is even more messed up for sure. Especially in the beginning we were on the phone with Purdue many times a day, and I think about how much extra time it would have taken to call the insurance company and get pre-authorization, and how many things they would exclude going forward, and I'm just so glad everything was as simple as "Yes I understand she's under and we need to make a decision NOW on this surgery, please proceed" and not two phone calls and a discussion every time.

      One thing I will note, I have no way to confirm or deny this but I think the fact that she wasn't insured worried Purdue. They were very focused on getting her out ASAP and kept mentioning the bill, especially during her first stay before they prematurely discharged her, despite me telling them it was fine. I assume they get a lot of uninsured owners that would have hit their limits well before we (thankfully) would and probably would have freaked out over the bill, but it's not like we can whip out our financial statements to prove it to them.

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  7. I am just so glad this has a happy ending. She will get her condition back.
    Rood n Riddle is also a teaching hospital, but I'm not sure they lower bills for "teaching funds" or the like. Perks of a university perhaps!

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  8. When Poet did his little weird head shaky episode a few minutes ago, the first thing I jumped to was your story here. Colic is awful, and I've been on the tragic end of it, but we seem to know a lot about it. They are so fragile and we don't know so much. Also for what it's worth, I don't do major medical either. I carry a colic premium on my mortality, but I think MM just complicates things unnecessarily.

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    1. Ugh, I hope his head shaky thing was nothing, I don't want anyone to go through anything like this. That's interesting that you just have colic + mortality, I didn't know that was an option.

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  9. I'm so glad Aeres is home and feeling better - what a saga :(
    I'm very sorry about your friend. What a rotten thing Covid is.

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    1. Thank you, I appreciate it. Felt so good to get my first shot yesterday.

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  10. So many things worse than colic surgery, but I used to think it was the worst thing too. Horses will always prove you wrong I guess? None of my current horses are insured (oops. dropped the ball there...) but I normally only carry mortality insurance.
    I'm so sorry you had to go through this at all, and especially during Covid. I'm very sorry for the loss of your friend.

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    1. Thank you <3 I think mortality only is a good way to go if you're buying mature $$$$$ horses for sure.

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  11. So glad there is a light at the end of the tunnel. What an awful thing for you to go through. All of these points are so important. And I agree with you about the insurance. I feel the same way about the dogs. It's better (for me, not for everyone) to set the money aside and be able to decide what I want based on what the vets say without jumping through hoops for insurance.

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    1. Thank you, yes there is a big light, she's doing quite well at the breeder's now! And yeah, I value the freedom more than anything, like you. Some people may value the financial certainty more. All depends on your preferences!

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  12. I am so glad that this ended on a positive note for humans and horse. Lots of great takeaways and I'm sorry about your friend.

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  13. I often give my clients similar advice about insurance- granted in the back of my mind I always wonder how many people are actually going to put that money away for a "just in case". I do also suggest mortality to people who buy a horse with a big purchase price that they wouldn't be able to replace if something happened to it... while reminding them that certain things like euthanizing a colic in which surgery could save the horse, etc wouldn't qualify them to collect mortality on the horse. I personally fall in that category- I couldn't afford to replace Q right now, and I also have surgery added on (includes but not limited to colic). It wasn't expensive to add on, but only covers surgery which would be all that I want, I don't have or want MM. I'm not sure how many years I'll keep renewing it on him.

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    1. Interesting! Yeah I agree, it takes more self-discipline to pay yourself than to pay a bill. And that colic/mortality payout scenario is exactly why I don't like insurance. I don't want money, or another company's opinion, to come between me making the decision that's best for the horse. Although I guess the best way to ensure you're not put in that particular scenario would be to always carry MM if you're going to carry mortality.

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