12/4/17 X-rays

I had been looking forward to Wednesday afternoon since the vet visit on Monday morning hoping that x-rays would give us the answer to Jacks current issue.
I got up extra early Wednesday morning in order to get Jack in before starting work an hour early to enable me to finish in time for the vet visit at 3.15pm!  It was a bit of a rush but I made it!  As usual the vet wasn't on time so while I waited I set about mucking out, filling hay-nets and water buckets and then gave Jack a good brush. 
When the vet arrived we started by trotting Jack up again just to be sure there was no change from when he had seen him Monday, which there wasn't.  Next he asked if it would be ok to block out just the coffin joint and see if this made any difference before carrying out the x-rays.  I agreed and he set about blocking out the coffin joint, however Jack did NOT like this one bit and put up quite a fight breaking 3 needles and throwing me across the stable numerous times as I tried in vain to hold up the other leg in an attempt to assist and keep him still.  He was clearly not going to stand quietly and let the vet get a needle into the joint, even with a humane twitch, so we made the decision to abandon that idea and just do the x-rays.
Unfortunately by this point Jack was pretty agitated and would not even stand still for the x-rays so he had to be sedated to get them done.  Once he was safely in the land of nod we were able to get images of both front legs from the fetlock down and from front, side and back.  The vet took images of the good leg too for comparison.

X-ray image of the fetlock                                  Jack on the blocks

Once he had taken good images of all angles and both legs he had a thorough look at them and then showed me.  Sadly it was not the news I wanted to hear....there was absolutely nothing so see on any of them!!  All the bones and joints looked perfectly healthy, no chips, no fuzzy edges, no whitening, no dark areas just plain old healthy joints and bones.  Now I know this is good news in a way but I really, really, really wanted answers and sadly we didn't get any, not even a hint of what might be going on.  The vet was as dismayed as me and after discussing the options the only thing he could really advise me was to give Jack bute, rest him and see how he is in a weeks time.  This all sounds horribly similar to last time :0(
As Jack was still under sedation the vet wanted to try the coffin joint block again so he got another needle and once again tried to get the needle into the front of the joint.  Well that woke Jack up and having broken another needle and nearly flatten us both we decided to knock that idea on the head again.
He did say he would take the x-ray images back to the office and look through them with the head vet to see if he could identify anything he may have missed but having seen them myself they were so clear I can't imagine that he will find anything different.  Still you never know!

He still feels the issue is not soft tissue and checking the ligaments and tendons again said they all felt smooth and normal.

If in 2 weeks times there is no improvement he did say they could perform an ultra sound or maybe even an MRI to see if that reveals anything but he doesn't feel this is worth doing at the moment as the lameness and response to nerve blocks do not point to ligament or tendon damage.

Feeling very deflated I popped Jack back out and went home to have a good old sob to my other half.  My poor horse doesn't deserve this, he's been though enough and it's time his luck changed.

I have kindly been offered other horses to ride while Jack is out of action which is nice but it's not quite the same, I want my boy back, he was doing so well! 

I discussed my management of Jack with the vet to see if he thought there was anything I could have done differently but he assured me I'm doing everything right and I was just incredibly bad luck.

He still feels confident Jack can make a full recovery despite not being able to pin point the issue so I will put my faith in them and hope for the best over the coming 2 weeks.

Please everyone keep your fingers crossed for Jack!