My horse Rosalie had surgery yesterday.

For a year and a half we have been fighting lameness issues. She has a condition called navicular disease, which, in her case, means she has a cyst in one of the bones in her foot. The cyst was caused by a disruption in the rate at which dying cells are replaced by new cells. Happens in horses sometimes.

Until fairly recently there was no real treatment except pain management. Now there is a drug that can be had by jumping through many hoops including begging the FDA to let you import it (from France) and the drug is VERY expensive - but has shown promise in restoring the cell replacement balance and even regenerating some bone. Because I believe in trying to solve the underlying problem rather than just fixing pain - and because the risk of breaking the bone was too great if we just fixed the pain - we bit the bullet and jumped through the hoops. She was given the drug last March. Along with several other steps to ease her pain of course - shoeing changes daily horsey aspirin, careful physical therapy.

Rose did in fact show some improvement following administration. The cyst has decreased in size by about 15% and shows some increased bone density. However, after eight months, she is still "off" at the trot for a significant percentage of the time.

So yesterday we took the final step and she had surgery to strip away the nerve that sends pain messages from her heel. She'll still feel the front half or more of her hoof.

Now we have 30 days of total stall restriction and then, hopefully, I will finally have a horse free of pain and I can watch her float big and beautiful across the pasture again - or better yet with D2 in the saddle collecting ribbons at horse shows...

Vet called yesterday morning and said all went well, going to pick her up later this morning.







I'd really like to be able to do another dose of the Tildron - but that will simply have to wait a bit. That drug is seriously expensive.

Here's to hoping I have new pictures of Rose being ridden to share with you all in the coming year.

Update - I've picked Rosie up, gotten instructions on wound care - bandaging - dietary management, etc. OMG I was not prepared for the cost of after care. Bandaging every 2 days for 30 days - about $20 per. And if she gets it wet or it gets bunchy or saggy gotta do it more often. It is horse bandages for me for Christmas!
If this horse is not sound and ready to roll when we get through this, I'm going to be certifiable.

Update #2 - I'm trying very hard to be reasonable and not freak out here. Three and a half days after surgery the horse is limping big time. But that is to be expected right? I mean, she does have four incisions (all be them small ones) with stitches. Makes sense she'd hurt right. Even though the surgery was to remove a nerve so that she wouldn't hurt any more. But of course the nerve was the one that feeds the back half of her hoof. Not her ankle area where the incisions are. So it is only reasonable to expect her to hurt right? Right? in a small worried voice on the verge of a totally irrational panic attack...