Monday my horse developed a very strange and mysterious illness, called the "My Eye Is In Pain For No Reason" illness. We momentarily suspected conjunctivitis--'tis the season, and whatnot--but threw it out as there was a complete lack of swelling. He was just squinting--a lot--with all signs of horsey eye-pain (i.e., squinting, eye watering, eyelashes down, pupil closed up, etc.).
We called the vet, who first bet me money that it was an ulcer--and later had to pay me $15, because he could find no ulcer. He did, however--after nerve blocking and almost fully sedating my totally stupid thoroughbred idiot-child--find that there was, while no evident trauma, an excess of
blood in my horse's eyeball.
Repeat:
in in in my horse's eyeball.
So he is on heavy antibiotics, and banamine 2x daily. One of his two antibiotics dialates the pupil, and therefore he goes out in a fly mask with a huge pirate-esque duct-tape eye-patch. He looks like such a dork.
This will be the fourth week now that he is out of work, after first going semi-lame because I waited a week longer than five months to have his hocks redone; and then going lame because he tried to jump out of our stallion paddock. [No one saw this happen, only saw him as he came crashing down from not-quite-making-it to skid across our gravel driveway and fully implant himself with rock bits.]
... *sigh*
Anyway, I was wondering if any of you had experienced similar eye drama? I'm pretty much ruling out uveitis; my vet said he really didn't think it was likely, since my horse is 10 and has never before suffered an attack. I'm totally open to ideas, however; if we don't figure this out, and the generalized antibiotics don't help, we could lose this eye.
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