March 4, 2021

The Infection: Part 3

On Saturday evening, I again hitched a ride to the barn from a barnmate. It was quickly obvious Aeres had relapsed - more foaming at the mouth and picking at her feed, but this time her entire muzzle was swollen, and there were large swellings under her jaw right above her chin. So the swellings were not where I'd expect to see them if this was strangles, which would affect the lymph nodes closer to the throatlatch.

Saturday morning, muzzle wasn't really swollen yet

She had been perfectly fine that morning, so I surmised that one of two things had happened: either this was caused by a plant she wouldn't normally eat that she was eating in turnout due to the snow, or the steroid from the night before had made her temporarily feel that much better, and when that wore off, she relapsed. 

The vet warned me it would be 90 minutes before he got out there because he was already at an emergency, so I used my nervous energy to walk her snowy field looking for signs that she'd eaten a plant at the edge of the field out of boredom or something. Nothing. 

Took pictures of all of the plants she has access to over the fence just in case

I'm not proud of the amount of horsey WebMD'ing I did during this particular wait for the vet. The vet honestly and apologetically admitted he was stumped at this point, and so was I. So many things lined up symptomatically except for a single symptom: colic, trauma, strangles, vesicular stomatitis, botulism, even rabies. 

This of course had me nervous that it was something transmissible, despite the fact that none of the other horses had symptoms, everyone eats the same diet, and no one had shipped in or out in nearly two months, since Connor came home. The vet was confident it wasn't infectious, but also didn't know what it was so his confidence wasn't exactly comforting.

Checking for the coronary band lesions that would indicate VS and finding none

(Mildly Related Public Service Announcement: During my incessant Googling I learned that early symptoms of rabies in horses looks a whole lot like colic, and if you come into contact with that horse's saliva while treating it for "colic", you have to get the extremely painful series of rabies vaccines or you die. So if your horse is not vaccinated for rabies, at least have that in the back of your mind any time your horse is sick.)

When the vet arrived, he noted that she still had no fever, and her salivary glands (near the chin) were the fullest he'd ever seen on a horse. He'd seen swollen salivary glands twice in his career, but both were on seniors, and like me, was perplexed that there was no lymph node involvement.

He wondered if maybe a calcification had blocked her salivary ducts, so we took a series of X-Rays, which showed nothing.

Getting increasingly tucked up on Saturday morning, but still passing the tent test

He tried to insert a catheter into the salivary glands, but they were too swollen for even that. He spent multiple hours out there with me, apologizing profusely for being so stumped by this. In the end, he hit her with another round of steroids and for the first time, some antibiotics (literally put a needle in her neck and emptied syringe after syringe into her) and left me with two syringes of Dex to give orally the next day. 

At 9:30pm I finally went home, in a vehicle borrowed from yet another barnmate so that no one had to wait that whole time with me (except Meatloaf - best wingman). Barn family really came in clutch for me through all this.


 

The next morning (Sunday the 21st) she was again foaming at the mouth and just generally blah, so he had me give her Dex and that immediately perked her up. She ate an entire tub of chopped hay which was great because she hadn't had a full meal in over 72 hours at that point and I was very concerned about both starvation and colic. Her poops were small and infrequent due to how little she was eating, but she was peeing normally, probably in part due to the steroids.

 

It was Sunday evening that I noticed something weird about her drinking. During this whole thing up to this point, she had been drinking a lot. I watched her do it, and watched the muscles of her throat "swallow" each time. But on Sunday I noticed she was backwashing into her auto-waterer via her mouth (which unfortunately is not one of the models that has a counter on it), so I gave her a bucket and observed her drink out of that now that it was finally above freezing.

Horrified, I realized after 30 seconds of "drinking", the bucket had barely gone down at all, and I realized she had been trying and trying to drink without getting hardly anything into her body at least since Saturday morning - getting just enough to keep her alive and from colicking for real, apparently.

Frustrated "drinking"

It was at this point that the vet said he was referring her to Centaur (Purdue University's state of the art satellite equine clinic located 2 miles from my old barn) first thing the next morning, Monday. Monday would also be the first time in weeks I had even a prayer of getting the truck and trailer safely down our very steep snow covered driveway.

...to be continued

21 comments:

  1. Wow! This is truly an epic story. As I read this I am grateful to know that it had a positive outcome. but it must have been awful to live through. And add to it the fact that you didn't have reliable transportation due to circumstance beyond your control. February was beyond a terrible month for you. Hopefully March will be full of sunshine for you.

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    1. It made for a very good blog post series to be sure, but it sucked to live through it. It felt like it would never end, and not knowing what how it would end was gut-wrenching. Several times I thought colic would have been so much easier to deal with, just knowing what was wrong and dealing with it rather than this endless troubleshooting.

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  2. i have chills still. WTF omg. So odd all the signs and her not drinking thank GOD you were paying attention to her!

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    1. I didn't have a choice, this occupied my brain to the exclusion of everything else the entire time!

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  3. Great job staying on top of absolutely everything imaginable. This is just so terrifying! I'm so glad your barn fam and the new vet were there to help you through. I honestly have no idea what to guess at this point!

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    1. New vet was great, he came out three days in a row, didn't try to BS me about not knowing what was wrong, and continued to call or text every day for updates while she was at Purdue. He also criminally under charged me for all of this. I didn't know what to think at this point either - my mind just raced with options and nothing lined up.

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  4. I have to say I'm glad I know she's ok, because this is such an emotional rollercoaster and I'm so sorry you had to go through it.

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    1. It was really hard, and it was weirdly difficult not blogging about it or sharing on social media, although that both made for a better story and also insulated me from a lot of well-meaning armchair veterinarians.

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  5. If this was the uk, I'd be thinking seriously about grass sickness or possibly botulism poisoning at that point but as as it is, I'm kinda stumped, and wincing at how stressfull the whole experience must have been for all involved.

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    1. Funny you say that, my vet is I believe originally from the UK and did mention grass sickness just as a "if this was the UK..."

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    2. Yes, this sounds like how my mare who had botulism presented. Though she went down hill significantly quicker.

      I am glad you gave the addendum she is doing well now.

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    3. Definitely wasn't botulism, she never went ataxic or had a single neurological symptom

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    4. Good. My mare didn’t particularly either... until she suddenly did.... she started with the swallowing, looking like choke symptoms. For a few days while we tried to pinpoint what was going on.

      It is very scary and frustrating chasing symptoms with a sick animal.

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  6. Ahh...I can’t wait for the answer. Maybe a problem with her guttural pouch?

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    1. That was not it, but that's a good guess.

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  7. Did the final diagnosis explain the symmetrical tongue swellings? I've never heard of that happening except by trauma. Seems like every part of her head wanted to get in on the action...

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    1. It didn't, but I'm hopefully going to remember to ask about that when I pick her up at Purdue today.

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  8. This is killing me so I can imagine how terrible for you it was!

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    1. Absolutely brutal. Everyone talks about colic being the worst possible thing (and it certainly can be), but at least with colic you know what you're dealing with and can take immediate action to resolve it. Days of everyone being stumped and fairly helpless to fix it beyond supportive care was just agonizing.

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