Its all about the eyes and its, potentially, not good.......

S

SunshineTallulah

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Howdy all!

I went to a clinic on Saturday with my boy, had a great session. Lots to work on! Hey what's new there?

Got back to yard, turned him out. Get a call at 7pm that night, to say his eye doesn't look right. He's got it half closed.

Next morning, eye still not right. YM decides to call vet out. Vet comes out and diagnoses a scratch on the eye which has turned into an ulcer on the cornea.

Ok, so that is not so bad, however, he also noticed whilst he was examining him that:

A) his cataract (s) is/are pretty bad - think he means just the one eye

B) that he thinks there is a problem with the retina!

Vet not sure what the retina problem is, but he is going to check it out and speak to colleagues and look in his books, as he has never seen this problem before - but he didnt actually tell us what the prob was!

However, its potentially very serious.

The vet's notes say:

Slight micro-opthalmia
Cataracts wiht retinal vessel attervation (I think! Terrible hand writing!)
Fluontsclin (again cant quite make out spelling) positive, over ant. cornea



Vet is coming back in 5 days to rexamine. So the lad is on bute and eye drops.

Also, no cantering, no jumping, no taking him anywhere he doesn't know! Oops - he went out on Saturday and was a bit wired but put that down to not going to a party for a few weeks!

So I am going to take the day off work to be there when the vet comes back.

On one hand, if my boy had not scratched his eye we'd be none the wiser to these other issues. So I could have been riding him forever and not realised there was a problem unless he started to change his behaviour.

However, he had slightly cloudy eyes when I bought him, he's 18 in June, so kinda to be expected that they would gradually deteriorate, but I hadnt noticed that had got any worse.

But now I am really worried. What if he has to have his eye out? Or is going blind?

Also I only have veterans insurance for him, so he's covered for the scratch as its accidental but he won't be insured for any exploratories etc.

OH says we'd do what we needed to do and find the money somehow.

Yesterday, the lad seemed a bit down in the mouth, not even tempted by an apple and a bit iffy on his feet. Put it down to having his eye pulled around and feeling manhandled and sore. He did brighten up eventually.

Just wondering if anyone has had any similar experiences with cataracts/retinas or if anyone can decipher the vets notes!

Really appreciate it.
 
fingers crossed that it's nothing too bad, i had a mare who had to be retired with a cataract, and many years later it burst and she had to be pts, but it took a long time to go.
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if you can find them, Mr Johnson's Herbal Treats are the best cheer-me-up i've found for horses! very best of luck.
 
Not sure what attervation should be but fluontsclin should read fluorescein. It's the dye they put in the eye which "sticks" to ulcerated patches. So fluorescein positive refers to the dye sticking to the ulcer. I have ridden horses that are blind in one eye and they cope marvellously. If he does need to have the eye removes (I'm sure it won't come to that, but just suppose), I have seen a one eyed horse go round Gatcombe British Open, so they are OK with that too.

Hope your chap gets better soon.
 
I'm no help on the more serious stuff, but the scratch & ulceration will be very sore; enough to get him down; so thats not likely to be anything sinister. my mare had just the same, and it was incredible how quickly it deteriorated from a tiny, painless (and I thought, harmless) mark one day to a fully closed weeping mess the next. On the plus side it healed quickly & totally.

I hope the other things turn out to be controllable.
 
Hi ST - I'd be worried about this coz of what I learnt going through hell and back with my new (19 yr old) ned. I'm gonna copy (almost) the replies I've just posted to the 2 other recent eye queries. You need to watch your ned's eyes VERY carefully. Could be nothing, and clear up quite fast but it could be something more worrying. It sounds like an ulcer but the atrophy of the retina vessels might be uveitis. My ned came to me with gungy eyes (simple conjunctivitis at that time) that the riding school hadn't bothered to clear up. Possibly linked to blocked tear ducts. Conjunctivitis that won't clear up can flip over into something much more nasty called superficial keratitis, which is an autoimmune disease and is VERY hard and VERY expensive to clear. Structures inside the eye start to become involved and it can become a desperate and expensive battle. My ned had all this going on and, despite a 6 month battle, £4,000 and 3 trips to a specialist eye hospital, the eye eventually had to be removed. Worryingly, when I bought him he had conjunctivitis in BOTH eyes and the remaining eye is still highly iffy and all the skin around it is damaged and it weeps goo especially in high winds. My vets have given me a greasy antibiotic ointment which he is allowed to have squished into his eye on the end of a clean finger for THREE days, no more, when the remaining eye gets bad. Greasy ointments are eye friendly and don't sting. The end of your finger is safest as the pointy end of the eye cream tube can accidentally scratch your ned's eyeball and that could be BIG trouble when he has an existing infection as the iris has no blood supply so struggles with infections. If he had cloudy eyes when you had him, it may have been simple cataracts developing but I don't like the sound of what's happening now. Ideally, he needs referral to a specialist eye hospital so you know once and for all what you are dealing with. But Minnie's Mum is spot on. Even with 1 eye, my ned is the safest hack on the yard, pops little jumps, does prelim dressage tests and is generally a fab boy. My terror is something happening to his OTHER eye as we don't have any spares any more!
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Good luck! x
 
Attenuation is what I think you mean..which is 'reducing'.
Micro-opthalmic is 'small eyes'..as in born with small eyes.
Anything to do with the eyes needs to be addressed seriously...the eye is very delicate.
I would always recommend an eye specialist in cases to do with eyes...
 
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