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Sarcoid help please... ASAP, vet coming tomorrow...

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So Lacy has the sarcoid in her ear. We were going to leave it alone if it stayed the same, but it's getting bigger and bigger. I've been warned that these things can come back with a vengeance if not handled properly. My vet wants to tie a suture around it and keep tightening it every few days until the lack of blood supply kills it and it drops off. Is this a good method? What are the other methods? Which seems the most successful? How long do they take? I was hoping to show her soon, but this thing is way too obnoxious to enter a ring with so I'd like it to be something that works quick but I'm very worried about it coming back. She's also got a new one forming inside the tissue of the ear pinna instead of on it so now it looks like she has a big bump changing the outline shape of her ear. :BH :BH :BH Don't think that one can be removed without taking the pinna. Luckily it is only small right now. Let's hope it stays that way. So... thoughts?

Heather Sun, 05/17/2009 - 06:33

yuck! that completely sucks! Hope it heals quick..

I got the "chemo" creme from the dermatologist for my face once due to the sun spots I devloped living so close to the sun :roll: , it just would make the "cancerous or pre-cancerous stuff turn red and scab off, I wonder if it could be used on horses like this, it wasnt as drastic as this ... Its called carac? I think and about 100$ for a small tube.

lillith Sun, 05/17/2009 - 11:22

Im seriously unsure about practicality and especially price of this one but aparently they can make vaccines for a sarcoid, they use part of the tissue so it works on the individual infection and is supposed to be good.

raknrydr Wed, 05/20/2009 - 17:51

Wow her poor ear looks terrible, I hope it all heals beautifully and she doesn't become ear shy, I know if I was a horse I would.

My mare had her growth when I bought here and I watched it for 4 yrs and it slowly got bigger, when I bred her I then removed it, but at least it was not in a highly visable area like lacey.

accphotography Wed, 05/20/2009 - 18:21

Funny this thread be brought back up today...

The sarcoid is GONE......... however. It kinda caused some problems when it left:

[img]http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w65/…]

The vet is coming to look tomorrow to make sure everything is and will be ok. She *thinks* it will come back up, but she's never had this happen so she's not positive.

As far as the ear shy... nah. She was already ear shy, but I could rub it if I asked her kindly. She won't let me touch it now, but I can easily halter her with her normal, fitted, halter now. I can do anything but touch the ear itself (I couldn't get within a foot of it a week ago) so she's already almost back to normal handling wise. It won't take long to get her over it completely. She's a good girl and a very quick learner thankfully. Part of why I love her to pieces.

There was an article in April's Equus about sarcoids. It was very interesting. Apparently they are caused by the "bovine papilloma virus". Which means they are not contagious and they are not hereditary. :bounce

Soooo. It's good news and bad. Continue to wish us luck please. We will need it.

I'll have photos from my REAL camera (that was the phone above) later this evening.

Monsterpony Wed, 05/20/2009 - 21:09

I would look into splinting it like they do with cropped dog ears just in case.

[quote="accphotography"]There was an article in April's Equus about sarcoids. It was very interesting. Apparently they are caused by the "bovine papilloma virus". Which means they are not contagious and they are not hereditary. [/quote]

I said that a few pages ago :D It probably isn't contagious between horses, but they can be infected by from cattle.

accphotography Wed, 05/20/2009 - 21:36

The vet is coming tomorrow just to check everything and she already told me she's thinking about splinting it. However Lacy won't keep ANYTHING on that touches her ear, so I don't know that it will work. Not to mention... talk about painful.

accphotography Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:20

Well the prognosis is not good. It appears that she will likely lose her ear from the bend upward. The cartilage is visible at the bend and quite a large amount of the ear above that line has been eaten away. The vet heavily sedated her and we cleaned and debrided as much as we could. We applied some furacin and made a makeshift cone (looks like an ice cream cone made of cardboard) to go over her ear and hold the ear in the correct position. Over that we added a full ear fly mask and over that a turnout halter so hopefully she will keep the mask and cone on. The tip of the ear (last .5") is still in tact and is still warm but there is quite a bit of swelling at the bend and she's afraid there won't be enough circulation left in the upper ear to keep it. Keeping it in the cone will help the blood flow and hopefully help add to the strength of the upper ear. There is so little left of that part I'm no sure it will ever be strong enough to hold itself up even if the tissue doesn't die. Best case scenario is she will have a seriously misshapen ear. Worst case scenario she will lose about half of the whole ear (it could actually be worse than that, but I'm not going there yet).

She's ordered her to be on stall rest until further notice. She doesn't want her lowering her head for anything so we've raised her water bucket as high as we can and gotten her a hay bag and hung it relatively high. She's trying to keep the swelling and drainage down. We've also been ordered to remove the cone, clean and treat the ear twice a day (which is going to need *at least* a twitch as even under HEAVY sedation we still had a fight on our hands). We're also going to put her on SMZs until we feel she's in the infection safe zone. The vet will be back Saturday...... err. She just called me back as I was typing this. She wants to see her tomorrow instead of Saturday.

According to the vet, this sarcoid was FAAAAAR more invasive than they thought. Now that the tissue is bare she can see just how much sarcoid tissue there was and it was pretty much the hole upper half of her ear (at least... we hope). They had never seen one so externally small (relatively speaking) be so internally invasive. She wasn't willing to outright say it as we will never know, but she doesn't think any type of treatment really could have saved the ear at this point due to the invasivness of the sarcoid.

So at this point we're just trying to save what we can of the upper ear and pray that she doesn't have any systemic problems because of it all.

It's very sad knowing I've taken my last in tact head shot of Lacy. :cry: I have to admit, her floppy ear (even yucky as it is) is kinda cute on her. Even if it never stand up, or we lose it altogether, she's still going to be cute as a bug and loved dearly. However it makes her mommy, very, very sad. :cry: :cry: :cry: I feel VERY guilty that somewhere in this process I obviously went wrong... :cry:

Adell Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:32

[quote="accphotography"]I feel VERY guilty that somewhere in this process I obviously went wrong... :cry:[/quote]

I don't like the sound of this. I believe all things happen for a reason, maybe if you did something different something worst could have came of it all.

Like you said she will be just as cute as a bug.

Sending you a hug.

accphotography Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:37

Well I think the only thing I could have done was have it removed back in August when it first became very apparent. Any time after that it was probably already mostly too late. As much of her ear as it took over, it would have had to have been caught much earlier than we caught it. There's no guarantee all of that was not already there in August, but I suspect it would have been better than that it is now. That particular ear has been sore to her from day one, so I guess it's possible it's been there all along and just now moved to where we could really see it. It was just the popular statement when it first became an issue to "watch and see if it grows, if it doesn't leave it alone". I just wish I hadn't agreed to that. Though I guess it may not have changed anything. *sigh*

Thanks for the hugs... I sure need them today. I don't even know how I'm going to do what she's asking me to do with only myself. Hubby is out of town until Saturday. She had to twitch her even sedated. I can't hold a twitch and clean it at the same time... if a twitch will even keep her still enough. I really don't know what I'm going to do.

accphotography Thu, 05/21/2009 - 15:45

Oh and get this... there are still several knots of sarcoid tissue left in there too. She said the Xxterra will continue to work for a while longer so maybe they will leave without another treatment. We won't be treating again until the ear is at least standing, or gone though. Even if we lost the top part, there is still sarcoid tissue below that line that could be a problem, so unless it dies off soon, we'll be doing another round of Xxterra. What a mess.

(((((((Lacy)))))))

accphotography Fri, 05/22/2009 - 01:01

Isn't she though? I shouldn't admit it, but I do find it cute. Maybe I'm just finally getting over my depression about it and looking for a bright side (though I seriously doubt it will look like this for long).

It's a good thing she's not an Arabian or that she doesn't have a plain face. :laugh1

Guess this will take us out of any halter or on the line classes we might have been planning to enter though.

Morgan Fri, 05/22/2009 - 09:54

I hope it all sorts itsself out so you at least know whats gonna happen soon :sad
I must agree it's kind of cute though. :) (and much beter than the sarcoid!) I've seen horses from way up north with no ears due to frostbite when they were born, they are very cute too.