the vet came today to see ziggy pop newton
Carol · Aug 16, 2010
he had a chest xray, an ultrasound and his gelding. he is doing very well post-operatively no sign of bleeding and he is perky and fiesty.
the results on his chest are...long term chronic inflammation of the pleural cavity membrane and multiple lung abcesses.... probably originating from an untreated pneumonia. the abcesses are an issue because they wall off and antibiotics can't reach them...at some point they will probably burst leading to septicemia or massive bleeding into the lungs. the vet said we may just find a dead little donkey one day without warning...or he may develop a raging and life threatening pneumonia that he can't fight off and do the downwards slide... both options suck.
so we will try long term antibiotics and anti-inflammatories...we are talking several months at least and then repeat the chest scans to see what we see.
the good news is...despite how sick he is...and he really is a very sick little donkey...he looks healthy, his body condition is really good. so who knows, maybe ziggy will have the reserves to fight this thing off eventually...
hope floats til it sinks.
laura told me a cute ziggy story today...apparently on the weekend he came trotting up to KO with a soccor ball in his mouth...he dropped it so KO could toss it for him and then he chased after it....who knew zig newtons played soccor??!!