Recovery week 3

I can't believe we have made it to week 3 already!

7 weeks of box rest felt like a lifetime and I didn't know how Jack or I would cope but in reality it is passing pretty quickly and we are almost halfway through it already.

4 weeks today we will be back at vet hospital which should hopefully signal the end of Jacks stable confinement if all is healing well and they are happy with the xrays etc.

We have settled into a good routine and this is helping us both to cope.  I think knowing when to expect me/food is good for Jack and reduces his anxiety.

Luckily like a lot of men Jack is ruled by his stomach and this does help no end in keeping him calm and settled.  When the other horses are being turned out as long as he has a haynet or a bucket of feed he barely notices they are gone!

I am continuing to have to clean his 3 leg wounds twice a day but they seem to be healing nicely, other than a little bit of concern about the foreleg at the end of last week.  It swelled up quite a lot and was looking infected with some yellow puss bubbling out when I applied pressure around the wound.  I was unsure whether to call the vet but as Jack seemed fine in himself and was still eating, drinking and behaving normally I decided I would clean it all up, give it a really good flush with some cooled boiled salt water and then see how he was in the morning.  It seems that was a good decision as it looked so much better in the morning with the swelling reduced and no sign of any puss.  That night it looked better still so I felt happy there was no cause for the vet to come back earlier than the planned visit tomorrow.

Here are some images of his leg wounds the left are last week and the right this week looking much better :)

I'm looking forward to the vet visit tomorrow as now we seem to have turned a corner with the leg wounds I am hoping they can give me the all clear to begin a bit of inhand walk exercise/grazing which I'm sure Jack will appreciate! 

His back is still looking good but he is very cautious about you touching it so I'm pretty sure it must still be painful.  I can't say I blame him for being concerned he's been in chronic pain for so long poor boy - hopefully once it is fully healed and he has had time to realise it no longer hurts him he will be ok with it.

He was only on pain killers and antibiotics for 10 days and 15 days post op respectively so he is on nothing at all now, he doesn't seem any different and without having to disguise the meds I have been able to reduce his food intake.  He was only having molasses free alfa a and speedybeet anyway but I was having to give him a decent bucket full to get him to eat all the meds.  He has always been a good doer so I do have to watch what he eats and carefully monitor his waist line so it went a bit against my instincts to give him a big bucket of food twice a day!

I'm soaking his hay now too - its another job to do on top of everything else but the hay I got this time seemed pretty dusty and the last thing Jack needs is a cough on top of everything else.  It also cuts the calories so its serving 2 purposes albeit a bit of a pain to do!

I'm hoping to get another hay delivery today/tomorrow and with any luck that one will be better so I maybe able to cut out that job!

More news hopefully of the good variety tomorrow evening after the vet visit

2nd home vet visit 17/2/15

*****Warning this post contains images of wounds and blood!********

5days after his first vet visit at home they were back to redress jacks foreleg and remove all his stitches and staples - this is how he is looking:

So a bit of muscle waste which is to be expected after 16days stuck in a stable and major surgery but generally good condition!

He has been a really good patient so far but he really wasn't keen on allowing the vet to remove the padding from his back and got a bit upset and bargy when she started to peel it off. To be fair it probably wasnt too nice as it was well stuck down!  To keep him chilled and everyone safe he was given a small amount of sedative. Once he was in the land of nod the back pad came off pretty easy and I could finally see how his spine looked!  There were a lot of staples!  The vet counted them up as she took them out and there were 25 in total.  They came out nice and easy and the wound looked very neat and seems to be healing well. The vet was very happy with how it looked :) she said the wounds often weep a bit but his looked good and no sign of anything except a little bit of swelling which is totally normal.  He will now be left with it open to continue to heal.  Other than needing a light rug to make sure it doesn't get rubbed I don't need to do anything with it for now except keep an eye on it for any changes.

First pic is with the staples still in and second when they had just been removed.

So with his back sorted we moved onto his other staples in his chest and elbow.  They were healing really well and all the staples came out easily leaving really neat little scars (well 2nich!) which shouldn't be visible once the hair grows back.  They are still a bit bumpy at the moment but I'm told they will flatten back out in time.

Next we moved on to trying to take the stitches out of his off hind. They are on the inside right at the top so a pretty difficult area to get to, it took 3 of us to get it done - 1 holding his tail, 1 holding a torch and the vet cutting the sutures.  The stitches were all the harder to get out because they were stitched really tightly into the skin! It took a while but we got there.  I had been washing where the stitches had burst open twice a day by squirting cooled, boiled salty water in a syringe into the wound.  This seems to have done the trick and the vet was happy with how it was healing. She cleaned it up and removed some granulated tissue. It bled a fair bit but she said that's good and shows its all healthy tissue so I just need to keep doing what I'm doing with it until it is all healed.
He doesn't care much for being squirted with the salty water, I can't say I blame him - it must sting like a b***h!  So I do hope for his sake it heals soon so I can stop!

Finally we got to his off fore, he had had a full leg bandage applied on their last visit in the hope that it wouldn't slip down like the previous bandage had. Unfortunately it hadn't worked and again the wound had been aggrevated by the dressing and was very gunky but there was also another issue, pressure sores :( poor boy.  As the vet pealed off the dressing a big chuck of hair and flesh came away from the back of his knee :( it looks really sore and was weeping a lot too.
So the final few stitches were removed from the top and bottom of the wound above his knee (as the rest had already burst) and it was given a good clean up.  As on the previous visit it looked much better once cleaned.  The vet decided that due to the sores developing it would be better to leave the wound open.  The hope is that with the fresh air getting to it then it should heal a bit quicker too.  So it seems to be getting worse instead of better as I've now got 3 wounds to clean up twice a day plus some cream to apply to try to stop proud flesh developing.  Jack's going to hate me soon I'm sure!

If I knew then all the trouble having the melanomas removed would cause I never would have bothered.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing!

In theory he shouldn't need anymore vet visits until he has his back re xrayed on the 23/3/15 at the vet hospital but with all the issues with his 2 legs not healing very well the vet is going to come back again in a week to see how he is getting on.  With any luck the news will be better by then.

Until his legs are looking better he is still confined to his stable but we are hoping that at some point once the legs are better he can at least have some in hand grazing a couple of times a day.

Looking at him now compared to the day before surgery you can see the difference in the muscle over his back and hind end but it's not as bad as I expected.

 

Obviously it will get worse before it gets better as he still has nearly 5 weeks of confinement to the stable but if I can start to bring in some in hand walking/grazing in the next few weeks it shouldn't get too much worse I'm hoping!

Vet visit 12th Feb 15 - 10 days post op

****Warning - this post contains some graphic images of wounds !!*****

Jack had his first home visit from the vet yesterday, 10 days post op and 5 days since leaving vet hospital.

My own vet came to change the dressing on his knee and check all his other incision sites were healing ok.

I had not yet seen the mess he had made of his leg where he had a melanoma removed during the surgery.  As he came round and tried to get to his feet he burst open the stitches so they decided to heavily bandage it instead of trying to re stitch it as there was little skin left to pull together.

He had 5 melanoma's removed in total but the only one that had caused any issue was the one on his knee on his off fore.

I was interested to see what was going on and took some pictures at the bandages came off.

As you  can see from the image below it didn't look great

 

There was quite a lot of discharge and I was immediately worried but the vet cleaned it up and was actually pretty happy with how it is healing.  The discharge was due to some of the bandage having slipped down and irritating the wound.  Once she had given it a good clean with saline, which Jack didn't mind at all and stood like an angel bless him (he even tried to help by licking his leg!), it looked much better and she said the skin underneath was healing well and all looked healthy with no infection.

 

 

 

There was also some breaking down of the wound on his hind leg where 2 melanoma's had been removed.  Unfortunately the leg straps on jacks rug had irritated this area and it also needed some cleaning up but again the vet was happy with how it looked once she had cleaned it up and said it was healing well and wasn't infected.

 

She didn't want to take the pad off of his back until the staples come out next week but I showed her where it was coming up at the front.  She didn't have anything that would stick it back down so sent me off to the chemist to try to get some wound glue to stick it back down until her next visit.

 

She was very impressed with how Jack was coping with his confinement and wasn't worried by anything, she thinks he is doing very well and commented how well he looks still :)

 

This is him on 1/2/15 the day before surgery

 

 

And this is how he looked when the vet came last night

 

As you can see not too much muscle loss so far :)

 

He had his last bute sachet that night and is now only on another 5 days of antibiotics (hopefully!) and no more pain relief.  He is still eating his meds with no problems - what a good patient!

 

He has been far happier the last few days with some company 24/7 and we are now settling into a good routine with everything.

 

Next vet visit is on the 17th when he will have all his stitches and staples removed and his leg bandage changed again.  Unfortunately the vet doesn't think it will be ready to leave open by then so a further visit or 2 will be needed.  His leg is more trouble than the major surgery on his spine!

 

After the leg has fully healed hopefully we can at least start some in hand walking (with the help of a little sedalin!)

 

We return to vet hospital on the 23rd March where he will be xrayed and then fingers toes and anything else possible to be crossed will be that he can go out and we can get started on his rehab.

 

 



 

2/2/15 - 9/2/15 Surgery and the long road to recovery begins

Jack had his Kissing spine surgery on Monday 2/2/15.

I dropped him off a the vet hospital on the Sunday afternoon and he settled into the stable as if he had been there all his life - poor guy had no idea what was coming!  I said a tearful farewell and arranged with the vet nurse when I could visit and when they would call me.

I felt pretty lost leaving him behind.

I was at work the day of his surgery and felt that keeping busy was the best way to cope with the waiting.  The vet rang me at 10am to say they had him on the operating table and were about to start surgery it would take at least 2 hours and they would call me when he was in recovery.

2 hours came and went, then 3, then 4, at this point I was getting very concerned and convinced something was wrong at just under 5hours my phone rang and the vet told me the surgery had gone well and Jack was up on his feet in recovery.  He was a bit shaky still so they were keeping him in there a bit longer before moving him into a heated box.  While he was in surgery we had decided to also remove some melanoma's he has one of which was just above the knee on his off fore and unfortunately he managed to burst open the stitches from the incisions while getting to his feet.  He had made quite a mess of the leg and as the skin is pretty tight they decided not to restitch it and so he was bandaged instead.

The next morning I got a call to tell me how he had gone through the night, they said he was a little off but had eaten and drank and they were happy with him progress.

The following day I had a day off work and arranged to go and see him at the hospital.  They called me in the morning and advised me they were going to clean him up and take some xrays but he would be fine to visit in the afternoon so I headed over after lunch and spent an hour with him giving him carrots and mints and a bit of a brush which he seemed to enjoy.  I spoke to the vet nurse who told me they were very happy with his progress.  I was quote surprised how well he looked I was expecting him to be a bit subdued but he was alert and bright and didn't seem to be in much discomfort.

He stayed for another couple of days in the hospital and then 5days post op he was allowed home.  We picked him up on the Saturday morning and he practically trotted into the trailer!  He usually messes about on the ramp for a bit before going in but he was very keen to get inside!

They gave me some discharge notes and talked me through what I needed to do.  I was shocked to hear he was going to need another 6 weeks box rest, I'm sure when we discussed the op I was told 2weeks! 

We took it slowly travelling him home but he arrived dripping with sweat and looking quite stressed, I unloaded him and put him in his box which I had scrubbed clean and put down a nice big clean bed of straw on top of rubber matting.  I had also put his hay in a large rubber bucket on the floor instead of a net and hung a likit and turnip around the stable.  I also brought him a hay block to keep him busy.

He didn't settle too well, I think he was hoping coming home would mean he could go out!  One of the other liveries brought her horse in to ride and that settled him for a while but he went nuts when they went back out!  He was rearing and tearing round the stable like a loony :(

He eventually calmed down enough for me to spray him with some instamag calmer and this seemed to help him settle.

Later that night me was much happier and ate all his meds.

The next morning he was pretty chilled out again and I gave him a good clean up while he had his breakfast and meds.

When I went to check on him at lunchtime I thought he might be upset again as a new pony had arrived that morning and been turned out in the paddock in front of Jack but he didn't seem bothered luckily.  There were 2 other horses in but even when they were turned out he didn't react and just munched on his hay over the door.

That night he was happy and again had another horse for company for the night.  I left him eating his dinner and meds.

In the morning he was a bit unsettled again as his companion had gone out but he stood on the yard and ate his breakfast and meds while I mucked out and cleaned him up.

He managed to get himself wrapped up in his rope and then when I had saved him he got his headcollar wrapped round the tap but bless him he stood calmly while I rescued him again!

I rang the vets this morning to speak to the vet who operated again and check that the 7weeks box rest was absolutely necessary.  I had hoped this was a mistake!  He wants him to have the full 7 weeks on box rest then return for xrays and if all is ok then he can be turned out and they will give me a full rehab programme to follow.

He said that turning Jack out too soon will not be good for his recovery although if jack can behave enough he can have some inhand grazing.

I'm a bit disappointed as most other people I have spoken to have been able to turn out much sooner but the vets are the experts and if 7 weeks box rest is what it takes for Jack to make a full and complete recovery then so be it, although I will be asking for some sedalin when they come out later this week to change his bandages! 

If I can graze him in hand with some sedalin in his system that's better than nothing!

The story so far

This is Jackobee aka Jack, he is an 8 year old Connemara x TB.

 

I first started riding Jack in 2010 when he was a 3 year old in a riding school, I had started having some lessons as my previous horse had been diagnosed with Navicular and was retired.  I missed riding but couldn't afford to buy another horse straight away so luckily found a brilliant riding school very close by with a BE accredited coach as the instructor and owner.  Later that year I had him on part loan, he was still used in the riding school too but I was able to ride him 3/4 times a week and compete him.  We successfully competed at Dressage (Novice champions 2010 & 2011) SJ (several unaffiliated wins and placings) WH (champions 2011) and won mini 1 day event.
In 2011 the riding school was closed (the instructor wanted to retire and just have a livery yard) so she sold off all the riding school horses and I was offered first refusal on Jack.  It was a no brainer so in July 2011 Jack became mine.

At the time I didn't have any transport of my own and I had to move livery yards as I couldn't afford to stay where he was so didn't have the luxury of jumping on the yard lorry when there was space so for the rest of 2011 we only competed at a local riding club within hacking distance.

In April 2012 I brought a little trailer and we started to go to xc clinics and did some arena eventing.  We completed our first ODE in May 12 finishing out of the placings but happy with a 33 dressage 4 faults SJ and a refusal and handful of time penalties XC.

Shortly after I discovered I was pregnant and stopped jumping.

After having my baby in Jan 13 Jack was brought back into full work but never felt the same, I had everything checked back, teeth, saddle, feet and everybody told me he was fine so we ploughed on.

He varied between a bit off and awful but never got back to the level he had been before.  I have a different physio check him but again was told he was fine.

In Aug 13 I entered a hunter trial as a pair with a friend and her lovely pony I felt he needed a bit of fun, they gave us a fantastic lead round and we came home clear in 3rd place and qualifying for the national championships in Oct 13.

Things seemed to improve from there much to my relief and he was a much happier horse.

The finals in Oct 13 didn't go as well - my friend forgot to jump the B element at the 2nd water and we were eliminated but was still thrilled with how Jack had gone.

After this things went down hill again and during the winter with more time spent in the school the issues returned, Jack was crooked and reluctant to work so I had an equine body worker have a look at him - she found that his pelvis was out and corrected this for him.  He improved following this for a while but about 6 weeks later he was back as bad again.  I booked her again but this time there was no improvement and I started to loose faith in all the experts that were telling me he was fine.

I decided to give him some time off and then see how he was after a break.

It didn't make a lot of difference so I persevered some good days some bad and some awful!

In April 14 we did a combined training competition and came 2nd with a good solid dressage test and a clear round SJ but I still felt he wasn't happy.

In June 14 I found him down in the field he let me walk right up and put his headcollar on and I knew something was wrong - he NEVER did that!  He struggled to his feet and could barely walk so I got the vet out immediately.  While I waited for them to arrive I managed to get him into his stable.  The vet was confused.  He was standing pointing his left fore and resting his right hind but didn't respond to hoof tests etc she decided in the end to treat him as if he had laminitis due to his strange stance.  I felt this was wrong but put him on box rest, bute etc anyway as she suggested.  2 weeks later there was no improvement so I had a different vet out and he straight away identified the issue was with his back and refered us to Oakham vet hospital for further tests.

He was given a full workup at Oakham and Xrays confirmed kissing spines.  The vet decided to treat him with steroid injections into the affected area and see him again after 2 weeks.

There was a significant improvement and when we returned 2 weeks later the vet was very happy with his improvement but felt there was another issue with his hocks so these were also xrayed and confirmed some arthritic changes so these were also treated with steroid injections.

Things went well over the next few months and I started to look at entering some combined training competitions when it all started to fall apart again and in Jan 15 he was becoming dangerous to ride rearing at being asked to perform a simple walk to trot transition.

We were refered back to Oakham and more xrays were taken confirming his kissing spines had worsened - no wonder the poor guy had been so reluctant to work :(

I was given 3 options - surgery, more steroid injections or permanent bute.

The vet was very honest with me and went though each option in detail but I already knew that surgery would be the best option for me and Jack and luckily I do have insurance to cover the surgery and so he was booked in for the surgery on 2/2/15