Friday Update

Stella was as good as I could have asked for on Friday: she stood like a pro for her temperature, a quick physical and the sedation. She watched with curiosity as the vet tech's who accompanied Dr. A (we got the Internal Medicine Specialist!)  set up the monitor and all the cool gadgety things they hook up to the scope so we could get an idea of what was going on in there.

The results? No serious ulcers.

After about an hour of having to mess with a malfunctioning monitor and rinse away foamy spit from her stomach (she'd started doing a lot of chewing, probably out of irritation, about 2 hours before and so there was a lot of saliva in her gut) we finally got a 360 degree view of her stomach lining, and there was minimal ulceration. Officially, they found 3 small Grade 1 ulcers (the lowest grade, and the least threatening) and evidence of hyperkeratinisation (thickening of the stomach lining, a self-protective measure) in a few areas, but nothing dramatic and nothing Dr. A thought would cause recurrent colic. They also took some blood to check her protein levels in the rare chance she had Equine Irritable Bowel. Her proteins were completely normal.

The diagnosis? Well, there sort of isn't one...not truly, anyway. Did she have a few ulcers? Yes, but nothing more than you'd consider within normal for any domesticated horse.

Based on all this, we came to the conclusion that she really is "that sensitive". The idea is that the colic is as much behavioral as it is physiological: when Stella gets stressed, either by the environment or a stressful event, the tension goes straight to her gut and causes disruption. Instead of completely internalizing the tension, her body responds by colic. 

This theory makes sense (I mean, I sort of knew this all along): Stella responds well to low doses of Banamine when colicking, which is not normal for a horse with a heavy ulcer load. She also has no one "trigger" that causes the colic, and the cases have varied in intensity but have never gone past a certain point. She also can work herself out of it without human intervention after a period of time. And at this point, we have no other explanation.

There's a few changes to be made. Her diet will stay the same but with the addition of Neighlox, a pelleted supplement that promotes normal digestive function and helps minimize the production of excess stomach acid. She already gets almost-unlimited access to hay and pasture, but I'm planning on seeing if adding a scoop of alfalfa CUBES (not pellets, which is what she gets now) will also help. I also am keeping several tubes of Gastroguard/Equiox on hand to be administered several hours to one day before a known event (farrier, trailering, etc) as a preventative. Hopefully, this all does the trick.

If she continues to colic, then Dr. A will come back and do a full blood work-up and a stomach ultrasound. But let's hope we don't have to go there.