Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Rock Star

I'm pleased to report that Tag's surgery went well. To quote the clinic vet "she's a rock star" :)

She handled everything as serenely as always, and her extended stay at the clinic while I was out of town did not bother her at all. I love that she is such a great blind horse ambassador. Also happily (for me), the eyeball was removed without rupturing and it is now in a jar, on my desk. It's bigger than I expected, but otherwise pretty much like you'd expect an eyeball to look like. I can't wait to freak out my nieces and nephews with it. And anyone else squeamish . I'd post a picture but I don't think a photograph conveys the full effect. If I get any requests for it I will post one, how's that.

I felt validated in my decision to remove the eye, and a smidge guilty for not doing it sooner, when the surgeon told me that Tag's resting heart rate pre-surgery was an elevated 40, and post-surgery has dropped back to a normal 30. So that is my best gauge so far of how much pain and stress she was having, poor baby. I can already tell she is feeling better. She'll be hand-walked for a few more days, mostly to keep her from rubbing the eye on anything outside that might pop the stitches out, and after that her life resumes as normal.

On a non-horsey note, when talking on the phone to a guy for the first time, having met online and been emailing, and he mentions having a hard time getting a pistol permit due to a prior arrest for assaulting a police officer, don't walk, run. Run and be glad you preserved your anonymity. I was rendered speechless, truly. I suppose it could have been a joke, but who would joke about that with someone during their first-ever conversation? Yikes. I'm going to be single forever.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

Evolution

This blog is evolving, as is everything else on this planet. So rather than having it be exclusively about someday farm, I am hereby throwing open the gates to the rest of my life. Which my non-existent audience will undoubtedly find just as boring as I do. So. Here goes nothing.

My sweet, blind mare Tag will be having her right eye removed Tuesday. After five and a half looong years of trying and failing to slow the progression of vision loss due to Equine Recurrent Uveitis (ERU for short, aka moonblindness, aka Periodic Opthalmia) , glaucoma has set in, secondary to the ERU. While glaucoma was not unanticipated, I did not expect it to sneak in the way it did. Looking back , I have known for several months that Tag was really not quite herself, but with everything else that was going on in my life last year I did not worry as much about it as I should have. So when Tag started a bad flare-up last week, I began treating it as usual, although it did prompt me to have the talk about enucleation with my vet that I kept forgetting to have. Vet encouraged me to have a consultation with a vet from a nearby equine urgent care clinic, as they have a specialty piece of equipment that vet does not have; i.e. a tono-pen. Tono-pens measure intra-ocular pressure, that is, the pressure inside the eyeball. Normal is below twenty, over twenty is glaucoma, over thirty is bad. Tag's left eye (also blind but thankfully flare-up free, for now, at least) was an excellent 16. Tag's right eye was a very alarming 87. 87!!!! What a migraine that must be causing. So do to the danger of the eyeball rupturing on it's own, I scheduled surgery post-haste, for this Tuesday.

The hard part is that I will be out of town for work when my baby goes under the knife. I will be able to bring her to the clinic on Monday morning, to help her make that transition, but I cannot be there for any of her post-op care. So Tag will stay at the clinic until I return, she will come back to the barn a week from Monday. I expect by that time she will be quite her old self, pain-free and spunkier. Lookout world.

On the "DarcC is a freak" front, the surgical vet, while surprised my request, has promised me that yes, I can have Tag's eyeball in a jar, assuming it comes out in one piece as planned. Apparently sometimes, well, they don't. For all the squeamish people who don't read this, I won't elaborate. That eyeball has cost me a lot of money, damnit; it's mine and I want it back. Someday in the hopefully distant future I want to be able to bury it with her so she's whole again. Or maybe I'll just keep it to freak out small children - it can become a neighborhood legend, Boo Radley-esque. I'll be the crazy eyeball lady. "did you know she keeps an eyeball in a jar? No-one really knows whose it is, but some say it was a little kid who gave her a dirty look one day..." Or something to that effect.