Good morning texts

Yoshi had been steadily improving from his... Unknown injury. Until this morning. When I saw a missed call and a text from Ms. GY "Hey it might be time for an ultrasound, the leg is swollen and watm again. I put them all out but we can separate if you want to." 

Crap. Yesterday the swelling was localized to his medial sesamoid and he was sound on the lunge. I had actually laid in bed last night talking to my husband about whether I should have had the vet out already or not. We decided if he stopped improving then that would be the right time to have them out. 

Yesterday. Weird little wound pre-dates Friday. Has one on both fetlocks. Could be related to this whole mess though.

This morning? Dead lame at the walk and the whole leg was blown up. I called both vets that I use and one was able to come out. He was febrile at 102.5 and had an SAA of 1970. X-rays looked fine. Good thing she had February to compare to, because his rads aren't exactly what you'd call clean and when you're looking for osteomyelitis subtle changes matter. Ultrasound... Looked like fluid build up around his tendon sheath. She was worried about a septic tendon sheath and asked if referral was an option. Fortunately, the best $480 I've spent all year was on insuring him, so yep. Especially after being asked for my CC info for the $2k deposit for hospitalization when I called to let the hospital know we were coming. My vet said we could try to treat this in the field but she recommended bringing him in so they could do cytology of the fluid and see if it was septic. Not spend 5 days treating it like it was and then get back an answer from a sent off cytology.  

To get him to the hospital, I had to go retrieve the truck from my husband's work and reconnect the battery. Disconnecting it any time the stop is going to be longer than 45 minutes is our temporary solution for the stupid computer problem. It really only adds 2 minutes and a bit of anxiety about not touching certain pieces of metal to other pieces. I talked to my BFF equine vet friend on the drive to the clinic. She was not exactly rosy about the prognosis for a septic tendon sheath. She did say that she felt too often they were just treated as cellulitis and then caught too late. So bringing him in was the right thing even if it still wasn't great news.

I actually took him back to the same Dr as March. My vet spoke highly of him and he already had rads from March to compare to. He was in surgery when I arrived so I spoke to the intern and a tech about Yoshi's case and then unhooked the trailer and headed home. I kept myself busy helping Ms. GY rake and mow, but after 3 hours couldn't take it anymore. I called and they connected me to his Dr pretty quickly. He had sampled the fluid around the tendon sheath and it wasn't septic on cytology, but he cultured it and put antibiotics in anyways. He found a small subcutaneous abscess under that wound on the fetlock but couldn't get any fluid out of it. He felt it was just bad cellulitis with a weird pocket there but thought it should resolve with antibiotics and banamine. Thank goodness! I could have picked him up tonight, but he said they could keep him and put him on IV antibiotics for the night, and I could come get him the next day. Since he was already there, I figured that was the better route. So he's spending the night there on gentocin and penicillin, and I'll go get him tomorrow. I'm so so glad it's not a septic tendon sheath, now I just have to figure out how to keep him from knocking his fetlocks...