when good splints go bad

Keen observers may have noted that there has not been an update on Charlie for a little while. The last we heard, our favorite bay hero had sustained yet another splint-like injury turning his erstwhile leg into something more closely resembling an alien appendage.

one of those legs is not like the others!

The initial grotesqueness of that injury earned him a night of stall rest and standing bandages. Over the course of the next few days tho, the swelling and lumpy-bumpiness subsided to reveal something a little more standard looking: a tight, clean leg with just an active, hot splint protruding.

original injury flare up from friday progressed to looking like a more classic splint situation by monday

So Charlie quickly returned to a more normal turnout schedule - tho only in a small paddock with a buddy or two instead of in his normal giant field full of geldings. Things chugged right on along and I began making plans to leg him back up again with some trail riding (while still fully determined to take a zillion x-rays once Charlie's planned vet appointment finally rolled around).

shit got weird tho on tuesday

Really tho, I should have already learned my lesson about "plans" bc by the next day Charlie's leg had evolved to its next level of .... intensity. The whole thing was hot and fat, especially around the knee, and he was LAME on it.

the whole thing blossomed into cellulitis. and the splint looked.... highly suspicious

My immediate conclusion was that he must have gotten kicked in the knee.... but after further examination, discussion with peers and text consulting with the vet, we determined that the new heat, swelling and lameness was probably directly related to the original splint. And in fact, it was likely cellulitis.

plus charlie finally went lame. it was definitely buggin him :(
also this pic is photographic evidence of what i mean by saying charlie will tell you where it hurts. stoic he is not.

Maybe this is my karma for that one time when I thought Charlie had cellulitis when in reality he had just aggravated the splint... Well this time it became BOTH! How special.... Naturally we immediately began a course of SMZs and Charlie returned to stall rest.

by wednesday the splint was operating under codename Mt Vesuvius

In conjunction with the leg's newfound fatness, the splint itself was behaving rather.... oddly. Changing shape and size. Resembling nothing so much as a volcano.

stand back, she's gonna blow!!! (for the record, that's ichthammol on the splint while the rest of the leg is poulticed)

Suspicions of something nefarious going on inside the leg appeared confirmed: this thing was gonna erupt.

exploratory pin prick by vet yielded a syringe full of pus. yeppers, this zit is ready to pop!

So when we finally got our day with the vet, we were basically all hands on deck: all the xrays, all the poking and prodding to figure out what's going on here. The xrays themselves weren't as clear as the vet wanted them to be -- likely bc of the surrounding swelling and infection. But we found what we were looking for: Indications of a fracture.

so...... we popped it. 

That alone was basically enough to inform our next steps. There's a real injury in there that has not healed well and Charlie's immune system has officially classified it as a "foreign body" -- thus the massive infection. So that foreign body (the broken bone fragment) has gotta go.

for those of you fascinated by this stuff, there's video

But first we gotta clear out as much infection as possible. Including lancing that damn abscessing splint (which was grotesquely mesmerizing, fyi, and the vet was downright giddy that I got such good footage of it lol. #bloggermediajunkieftw) and throwing everything under the sun at Charlie in the hopes of reining in his cellulitis.

animalintex pad under gauze, then all covered with a cottony bandage to absorb the drainage

Obviously I'd be lying if I said I wasn't disappointed by this outcome. Even tho it was basically exactly what we had concluded would be the case all along.

for the record, charlie is an excellent patient #nodrugsneeded #wellok #maybeanerveblock #andatwitchtoo #justaropetwitchtho #heskindaintothatsortathinganyway

All the best case scenarios still involve a somewhat lengthy recovery period (including a not insignificant period of stall rest). Given that we're rapidly approaching winter tho, I fully expect to take the recovery extra slow. No sense rushing -- there's nothing to rush toward, ya know?

extra wrap bc of the cellulitis

The flip side, tho, is that even with the fairly major medical intervention this injury requires, it's still at its most fundamental a straight forward and inconsequential injury. Knocking on all things wooden, once we can get through this major pain in the ass of treating Charlie's calamitous splint.... Well. Life should just keep on keepin' on after that. Theoretically.

charlie was pretty casual about the whole thing

So now my priorities are just shifting a little bit to focus on keeping Charlie comfortable while we work out all the scheduling details. And naturally in the meantime I'm on full wound cleaning and bandage changing protocol for that damn abscess. Blargh.

poor pony

So we'll see how things shake out. I'm somewhat selfishly bummed about missing out on another fall season of riding -- including all my favorite shows and even the nascent fox hunting plans Brita and I had been making..... C'est la vie, tho.