Mingo

I haven't updated everyone on Mingo because, honestly, I just don't have the energy.  Since the emergency visist from the vet last week, he has had good days and bad.  Yesterday he hardly ate or drank.  Today, he is eating very well.  The rollercoaster ride has been rough.  I thought I would end up making the final call to the vet in the next few days, but now, I think I can wait...

Overall, he isn't getting better, and he has to have the drugs to make it through the day.  His quality of life is not very high.  Even on 3 grams of bute, he can't lay down anymore.  I know what I need to do, and I am trying to put it off for a few weeks until spring shot day.  His good days are so nice.  When he is his old self, I really realize what I have lost.

I discussed everything with my sister-in-law, who is a nurse practitioner.  That is like being a doctor without the ego.  She told me that if he was a human with his blood work and the symptoms he is presenting, she would say he had an autoimmune disease.  They are hard to definitively diagnose in humans, let alone horses.  They don't ever get better, and with people, the only thing that works well in anti inflammatory drugs--like Bute.  That may be why the bute makes such a difference.

An autoimmune disease would explain everything--even the hoof abscesses.  It explains why it seems like we are trying to hit a moving target.  It even explains why he has been so slow the last few years and walked like he was stiff.  Far more than you would expect for such a young horse.

So, right now, he is in Judi's Hospice Care.  I will try to make him happy and comfortable in the next few weeks, and then I will "set him free."