Isabelle at the hospital
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Re: Isabelle at the hospital
Isabelle is out of surgery. She did great. The vet says she was in great condition going in so that helped.
She had a 360 degree colon torsion.
She is not out of the dangerous time yet so please continue to keep her in your thoughts. I'm so relieved that she lived through the surgery though. I feel that the major hurdle is over.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
[quote="vneerland"]:o :shock: Oh no!!! Why....how...... :(
I am glad to hear that the surgery went well, but I am still feeling horrible for you. (and belle) Are you having to take over the care for Solo, or can she still do that post op? :?[/quote]
apparently colon torsions are fairly common in postpartum mares up to about a month after foaling. It seems the extra space in the abdominal cavity (left behind by the foal) allows for more movement of the gut than usual and increases the possibility of a twist. This risk seems to go away as everything shrinks back down to normal but once a mare has done it once they say she is more prone to do it again so it looks as though Solo is the first and last foal for Isabelle. :cry:
Solo is at the hospital with Belle so that he can nurse as she is able and they can keep an eye on him. They are feeding him supplemental concentrate in case her milk production is low and he is on anti-ulcer medication for the stress. He had a rough day yesterday.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
OK.....why the last foal?
Amira had colic surgery at age 15, really nasty, Vet took out 15 foot of gut, which is the most possible to do, and said there were still necrotic patches on the intestines but he could not take anymore so they would have to respond to antibiotics.....or not!!
He said the only thing I could not do with her, if and when she recovered was breed from her, I could ride her, jump her, everything.
I had a think about this, nipped round to my friend (we were in the Royal Veterinary Hospital at the time) and told him what the Surgeon had said.
Ed told me that, in 80% of colic surgeries, what kills them are the lesions, and it takes tow years for them to form to the point where the gut cannot work, and then all the scar tissue that has formed strangles the gut and that is it.
If the animal is in foal the lesions cannot form.
He advised me to put her straight back in foal.
As it turned out I had to take her home as the after care at the time was so awful I could not leave her there a day longer.
Five months later she came eighth in the open mare class at Nationals and was back in foal.
The only difference between this and her previous pregnancies was that she carried a full twelve months then had the biggest foal I have ever had form her!!
I put her back in foal, got a very nice filly, and then retired her.
She lived another five years then it all caught up with her and the gut just gave up working, but I was glad I gave her that time, and I do think a younger mare would have had a better chance, also of course her colic was different to Isabelle's colic.
I am so sorry this happened but my advice would be to get a specialist opinion form an Obstetrician, as I did, before you give up on breeding form her.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
Isabelle is continuing to recover. She pooped today. :) She's still on fluids and apparently she may only eat green grass and only in small amounts but tomorrow may have a bran mash and then they will slowly try hay again to see if that will throw her back into a colic. I don't know if I mentioned it here but they said there is a chance she may never be able to eat hay again and will have to be on a complete pelleted concentrate for the rest of her life. Solo is doing well, getting lots of grain to make up for Belle's decreased milk production, and making friends with everyone. If everything goes well, they may come home on Friday.
Yes, Isabelle and Inigo have the same sire. Weird, huh? We did not do a necropsy on Inigo but the vet who saw him said she suspected a complete colon torsion -- same as what was found in Isabelle. I asked the surgeon if this is hereditary and she said no.
Isabelle's colic was totally different from what Rabbit described. It was directly related to the recent foaling and the space left behind in her belly. If there is even the slightest increased risk of a repeat occurrence (which the surgeon says there is), I will not breed her again. Embryo transfer would be an option. Not having an easy way of keeping Isabelle's bloodlines in my breeding program is increasing the likelihood of keeping Solo intact, as long as he is nice enough.
Thanks for the support. This was truly terrible. I wish that none of you will ever see a colic like this (MP you will see them if you haven't already and they're awful). I had just gone down to the barn to quickly top off waters before I headed to my office and noticed Belle seemed a little painful. I watched her for the time it took to fill her three buckets (no more than a minute or two) and in that amount of time she went from looking a little painful to pawing and starting to roll. I haltered her, started walking, and almost immediately it was impossible to keep her from dropping to thrash on the ground. She was in a black sweat within five minutes or so of my first observation that she just didn't look right. I called two vets (and did not reveal to either that I was calling two) and waited while each of them rearranged their schedule and rushed to my barn. I didn't want to take any chances and figured the first to arrive would treat her or put her down and I would call the other to cancel. By the time the first vet arrived about an hour after my initial observations, Isabelle was flat out in the arena, legs stiffly in front of her, with her tongue hanging out of her mouth. I ran to his truck and started calling to him, "Put her down! I want you to put her down!" He looked at where she was laying, said he might still be able to save her and that he really had to try. I thought she was moments from death but he pumped her full of pain killers (staggering amounts of pain killers), got her up, did an exam, and called ahead to the surgery to give them her history and what he had done. I absolutely could not believe it when she walked on her own legs into the trailer. Of course she was so doped up at that point that the vet said we could have done anything to her and she would not have known or felt it. She meekly called for Solo when we shut her in (he had to come on a separate trip in case she went back down in the trailer) and that was about it.
I feel I made the wrong decision when I had the vet try to save Inigo. I feel I caused him several more hours of agony when he should have been put down on the spot when the vet arrived. That's why I wanted Isabelle put down as soon as the vet arrived this time. I've never seen such pain in a horse and I wanted it to end for her. I'm still stunned to get the phone calls that she is alive and eating and nursing her foal. I have not been able to go see her since she came out of surgery since we had a show this weekend. My initial thought was to scratch but I decided that for my students and a little bit for myself, I needed to go through with the show.
I also keep thinking about the timing of everything. If it had not been a warm day and I had not decided to top off waters one more time before leaving for work I would have come home to a dead horse. If I had been ten minutes ahead of schedule I don't know if I would have noticed her symptoms and would have filled her water, unaware that she was about to colic. The time difference between when I discovered the colics in Inigo and Isabelle is only two hours at the outside maximum and it made the difference between death and life. It makes me never want to take my eyes off any of them.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
That sounds like a terrible experience and that you caught it just in time. When you said that Isabelle was being prepped for colic surgery, the first thought I had was "don't let it be a torsion" since she was so close to having had given birth. I am so glad to hear that she is pulling through and my fingers are crossed that she'll recover fully. Keep the updates coming.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
That's true, Amira's was an intususcepcion (is that even a word???) and the gut was breaking down all over the place....I too wanted her euthanised, but the person who had her on loan already had her in the college, and so I let them try.
I'm really glad I did now, I agree it is hard to see an animal in such pain, and your automatic response is to remove the pain, but drugs can do that really efficiently and very quickly, and one they had Amira on happy pills she was OK!!
Moral of this story is never let someone loan an animal off your place...I thought she was safe, they kept her short of hay and she ate her dirty bed. UGH!!!
I think you could help the situation if you could get her really fat...breaks all the broodmare rules, I know, but pig fat means less room for the uterus and more to fill the gap when the foal is born....di she carry very low in the belly, was Solo really big at birth??
Whatever the cause of the colic, the resultant scarring from the surgery, and the risk of lesions is, I'm afraid, the same.
Anyway, that's all in the future, I hope she continues to recover well and comes home soon.
Re: Isabelle at the hospital
OMG! I'm so sorry!!!
Sending healing vibes her way!