Not good. Not good at all. Part 1.

A quick recap -

I took Kaswyn to OSU on Monday. He was supposed to have surgery Tuesday.
His bloodwork Tuesday morning came back with low white count, so the surgery was postponed until Wednesday. I left him in Columbus.
The surgery went well and I drove down and back to Columbus to fetch my horse on Thanksgiving.

I went out Friday, Saturday and Sunday to see him. He's on complete stall rest for two weeks after the surgery, so I was just able to go into his stall and visit with him. On Saturday I changed the bandage.

Sunday I saw him, and then took Lee (buckskin half-arab gelding) to a schooling show.

On Monday I stayed home and got some things done around the house.

Today, Tuesday, I got a call from the barn manager (she's a friend, too) in the afternoon. She said Kaswyn wasn't putting weight on the leg, so she unwrapped it because it looked like the vetwrap had slipped down and was maybe too tight around his pastern - right over his incisions. She wrapped it back up and said he should be fine until I got there.

I got to the barn and Kaswyn wasn't putting weight on the leg. In fact, his whole leg was shaking. I took him out of the stall and unwrapped the leg. It was very swollen and the incisions were weeping a little bit of blood and serum.

Shit.

I called the OSU surgeon, who said she was alarmed that the leg was swollen and non-weight bearing. She said give him 2 grams of bute, ice the leg (but don't cold hose it, as getting it very wet can allow bacteria to get into the incisions) and see how he is in the morning.

She said I could clean the incisions with a bit of surgical scrub and a small amount of saline. Then wrap the leg up, not using vetwrap but a standing wrap. She also said that he was probably in so much pain she wasn't sure I'd be able to do anything with the leg without sedatives. She said if I was really concerned I could bring him down there, since they are open 24 hours a day. I told her I'd call her in the morning.

I cleaned the incisions as gently as I could, then tried to wrap ice packs around the leg. As I was doing this, Kaswyn was really pulling his leg away in pain, but was trying really hard to be still.

God I love that horse.

Anyway, after I had the ice packs wrapped to his leg, he started breathing hard and sweating. Then he starting shaking. His foot was hot, he was in pain. He looked all sucked up in the guts too. Things were going downhill and I needed to do something. NOW.

To be continued...

Part 2