After a trip to Liphook Horsepital today I feel emboldened to start this new thread to keep all of you wonderful people posted on how little Ziggy Stardust is doing.
As you know, he came down with colic on Friday evening. It proved to be a very severe case of impaction colic, and he had surgery at 2 am on Saturday involving an incision to his caecum (the area of gut equating to our appendix, but enormous in horses and where most of the grass digestion happens) to remove the mass of badly-chewed grass and plant matter that was obstructing his gut.
The first 48 hours after surgery are crucial. Yesterday he was very dull and showing little reaction to anything, though no colic symptoms either. I did not visit him. Today I was told he was brighter so I went down to Liphook to say hello.
He is in the ICU there in a big airy box. He came straight up to the bars to say hello to me and I have to say he looked like my boy - ears pricked in the usual "What you got mum?"
He had a double drip fitted, which he was knitting by walking around the box. The drip leads into a catheter into the big vein in his neck. He was being given rehydration saline through one drip and painkillers/intestinal motility drugs through the other. The bloodstain under his chin is where they put the blood pressure/heart monitor into the artery during surgery:
While I was there he was taken off the motility drugs and given some water to take by mouth. He didn't seem interested. I talked to him and scratched him and offered him some essential oils to sniff. He went for the rose otto oil (for trauma) in a big way, breathed deeply, yawned and flehmed, then went and had a drink :smile:.
He was very itchy, especially on his face, and rubbed on me and asked me for scratches. He got loads of course, and I am going to take his face and mane brushes along this evening to help him out. He also told me that he was itchy where they had clipped him and around his incision, which is like a zip fastened up his belly:
so he got a few scratches as near as I dared. He is a limber little pone and was getting perilously close to the stitches with his teeth, so I told the nurses on him and they went off to consult the vet. I hope they don't put the horse equivalent of the Cone of Shame on him!!!
He is a little "camped out" which I am told means he is standing with his feet close together as a sorefooted horse might. But his hooves are not too warm and his digital pulses are low, and the vet is happy with his feet.
I stayed with him about an hour, during which time the nurses fed the other horses in the ICU. Ziggy got very impatient and pawed the ground. He was strongly of the opinion that ponies should be fed, too, and he didn't take kindly to me telling him that he was nil by mouth until tomorrow. All he did was stare out at the hay truck:
I am going back tonight with my friend Catherine to do a full zoopharmacognoscy session (offering him essential oils) to help with healing, promote good gut response, minimise the laminitis risk and help him get over the trauma. The hospital vet says this is fine as long as we keep him on water only by mouth.
What was lovely was that he was my boy, very subdued as you would expect (looking at the pictures, I think he looks sad) but still full of Ziggyness. I feel optimistic! :happy:
As you know, he came down with colic on Friday evening. It proved to be a very severe case of impaction colic, and he had surgery at 2 am on Saturday involving an incision to his caecum (the area of gut equating to our appendix, but enormous in horses and where most of the grass digestion happens) to remove the mass of badly-chewed grass and plant matter that was obstructing his gut.
The first 48 hours after surgery are crucial. Yesterday he was very dull and showing little reaction to anything, though no colic symptoms either. I did not visit him. Today I was told he was brighter so I went down to Liphook to say hello.
He is in the ICU there in a big airy box. He came straight up to the bars to say hello to me and I have to say he looked like my boy - ears pricked in the usual "What you got mum?"
He had a double drip fitted, which he was knitting by walking around the box. The drip leads into a catheter into the big vein in his neck. He was being given rehydration saline through one drip and painkillers/intestinal motility drugs through the other. The bloodstain under his chin is where they put the blood pressure/heart monitor into the artery during surgery:
While I was there he was taken off the motility drugs and given some water to take by mouth. He didn't seem interested. I talked to him and scratched him and offered him some essential oils to sniff. He went for the rose otto oil (for trauma) in a big way, breathed deeply, yawned and flehmed, then went and had a drink :smile:.
He was very itchy, especially on his face, and rubbed on me and asked me for scratches. He got loads of course, and I am going to take his face and mane brushes along this evening to help him out. He also told me that he was itchy where they had clipped him and around his incision, which is like a zip fastened up his belly:
so he got a few scratches as near as I dared. He is a limber little pone and was getting perilously close to the stitches with his teeth, so I told the nurses on him and they went off to consult the vet. I hope they don't put the horse equivalent of the Cone of Shame on him!!!
He is a little "camped out" which I am told means he is standing with his feet close together as a sorefooted horse might. But his hooves are not too warm and his digital pulses are low, and the vet is happy with his feet.
I stayed with him about an hour, during which time the nurses fed the other horses in the ICU. Ziggy got very impatient and pawed the ground. He was strongly of the opinion that ponies should be fed, too, and he didn't take kindly to me telling him that he was nil by mouth until tomorrow. All he did was stare out at the hay truck:
I am going back tonight with my friend Catherine to do a full zoopharmacognoscy session (offering him essential oils) to help with healing, promote good gut response, minimise the laminitis risk and help him get over the trauma. The hospital vet says this is fine as long as we keep him on water only by mouth.
What was lovely was that he was my boy, very subdued as you would expect (looking at the pictures, I think he looks sad) but still full of Ziggyness. I feel optimistic! :happy:
