Prair Prognosis

Alright.  One month (and apparently a lot of cash) later, we have more info on Prair and her bum left paw.

As predicted, the two radiologist that looked at the MRI had shockingly different opinions (I guess that's why you get two?).  They both identified the same issues, but ordered them differently in terms of relevance and importance.

As with anything, if you start taking pictures, you find all sorts of crap, some good to know, some scary and some not relevant at all..

The WSU vet identified the primary issue as the sagittal tear in the medial oblique sesamoidean ligament on her left fore.

Our second read agrees that the ligament has irregularities, but thought it was more of a "strain" and not a ful tear (yay).

Instead, Second Vet thought that the "mild fragmentation" of the navicular bone, and some strain on the DDFT was more concerning and the primary issue.  I'm eager to learn more about this since the navicular looked clean when we took a radiograph back in April... I'm hoping that means its *really* mild, and not something that's shown up over the last couple of months.

Prair has already had a month of (mostly) stall rest with walking in her Eurosizer every day, but the current prescription is to take another month off, get a series of shockwave done during that time and see where we are.

My primary vet seems rather optimistic about returning to her normal job, and while I know there are no guarantees, it's nice to hear.  Frankly I was mentally prepared to hear that Prair would need six months to a year for the ligament, so the notion of another month before starting back to light work sounds downright speedy.

Obviously we don't know-till-we-know... but I'm feeling more upbeat about things than I did over the weekend.  I spent a lot of time staring at the report from WSU (trying to fill in the blanks) I started thinking about how I would stay in the saddle if we were looking at a seriously long, hard road to recovery.

I know we still have a lot of finger crossing and time between us and getting back to the show ring, but I'm going to cling to the notion that my vet wasn't all doom and gloom when we chatted today.

Leaving baby Cayla James with my mom tomorrow so I can go down to the barn and cross paths with my vet in person and be there for the first shockwave treatment.  Also we are going to try to come up with a plan to maintain as much back support/strength as possible so we don't lose ground on the kissing spine during this ordeal....

sigh.