Update on Trax

We are home from the vets office, and still no definitive answers, other than we know that there is no tumor (whew) that we can see.  More blood work indicated a lower white cell count, but higher GGT (liver enzymes) by 30 pts.  Did an ultra sound and looked at both sides of his liver.

He has some atrophy on the right side of his liver which the Internal Medicine specialist says is not uncommon in older horses.  However the left side is a normal size.  We did spot one tiny stone in the liver, but it is very tiny and not significant enough to cause the symptoms he has been having.

While doing the ultrasound we looked at all the major organs and found something interesting.  On the last visit they said his breathing sounded odd.  When we ran the ultra sound over his lungs it looked like beams of light which indicates some thickening of the pleura.

The other thing he noted was that usually the liver is very dark on the ultra sound in contrast to the spleen which is lighter.  Trax's liver is very dense which could indicate some fibroid tissue.

So where do we go from here?  We are sending blood work into Phx for more in depth analysis, this will include a valley fever test (based on what we saw in his lungs-and VF can cause swelling of the lymphnodes just past the liver which could explain the slow motility in the GI tract)

He is on a new form of antibiotics, which have to be given in IV form, so now he has a catheter in his neck.  When we got home he promptly rolled in an attempt to remove it from his neck. I have to give him his meds once a day and flush the catheter 2 more times per day....and hope it stays in place and doesn't get infected.

It is our hope that the extra blood work will reveal something and that we will see a lower GGT after this round of antibiotics.  For now we just keep on keeping on.  He did say that it is not unheard of to see the fluctuation in the GGT titers such as this.  However, the very high fevers are what have him concerned more than anything.

On an interesting side note, when they clipped Trax to do the ultra sound, he barely moved a muscle.  Usually clippers of an kind will have him climbing up on top of something to get away.  I was so proud of my boy.  He has been taking all the poking and prodding like a pro.

So no real answers yet, just more questions and a bigger bill.  Time to go sell some saddles.  I just got a super cool Martin Rope Saddle that I had planned on keeping.  Not anymore, it will be up for sale by the end of the week.