Grass sickness

[carmenlucy123]

One of my two My yearling foal has presented with acute grass sickness ?tape worm infection.

She had surgery Thursday night and an impaction was removed from the illeum.
Yesterday she passed urine and a small stool and is keen to eat.*
They have now put her at possible sub acute ?tape worm. A blood test has been sent off
Her biopsy showed highly *positive but not definate yet for grass sickness but the lab wanted to perform one further staining which because of the bank holiday will not be untill Wednesday.
Today she will begin steady eating to see how she progresses
Can anyone share any stories good or bad x

 

[SaharaS]

just wondering if they did the eyelash test with her?I lost a filly to grass sickness in 2003 and one to EAM in 2010. both times I had a gut feeling it wasn't just colic and the vets were adamant it was.she was pooing tho as was the gelding, happy to eat & drink but not right and nothing was coming out.They put a particular eye drop onto the lashes and if it is grass sickness, it will make the lashes curl.Yes sounds odd and minor, but if they haven't done this, if they can/will at least it will give you peace of mind knowing its more likely GS or not.You have been lucky to be able to have her operated on and I'm hoping for your and filly's sake that it isn't grass sickness as they cannot definitely confirm without post mortem and we don't want to be thinking along those lines..sadly grass sickness is a condition that appears approx 10 days after the horse has been exposed to the still unknown something that causes it-you may have been incredibly lucky but it is rare to recover from unless the impaction was unrelated and as such saved vital time. The not pooing generally leads to impaction but by this point a horse with true grass sickness -as in not colic induced by grass/food- is usually because the organs have begun to poison and shut down.Fluid drawn from the outside of the stomach will show dark brown too. On a positive note, there have been a rare few horses that survived grass sickness but were on intensive care & rehab for months. Which area are you? also some horses can be in a grass sickness prone field/area and never get it..others will sadly just have that cell or gene that makes them susseptible. I sincerely hope your filly is going to be ok.My fillys first symptoms were strange uncontrollable but subtle muscle tremors in her near fore after a thunder storm. I lost her a week later when 5 visits later I couldn't see her go through it anymore and asked the vet pts. They had been adamant I was being neurotic..to quote the South African main practice Partner of this equine vets:I'm watching the rugby, call me back when you have a genuine emergency-7 days later on 6th June my beautiful little Lucy was PTS. Sounds like you have a good vets and that you are fully ontop of it. I hope your filly foal makes a full and fast recovery.sending hugs to her and you xxx