This message is from: GAIL RUSSELL <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hi Steve,
Thanks for the response. I understand that you are trying to keep me from imparting misinformation to the list...and appreciate that. I know that I don't have a good grasp of how all this works, but I sure would like to understand. Eventually, if I can ever find a good one, I will buy some humongous veterinary reference work and try to learn more about all this from the ground up. Right now I'm stuck with the kind of books that go sort of like this: "Does horse have a hang nail? Yes? No?; If the answer is Yes, Does the hang nail move when touched? If the answer is Yes, CALL THE VET RIGHT NOW." Not very helpful advice when you are away from your carefully selected vet, out in the boonies - an hour from the nearest large animal vet who treats cattle most of the time, and 3 1/2 hours (not the seven I thought) from the closest surgery clinic (in Redding, according to my home vet). >How can banamine (or other meds) correct a twisted large intestine? I thought banamine and other drugs were used to mask symptoms so things would not get worse. I thought that, among the possibilities for "things getting worse" was the horse rolling from the pain, and causing a twist that was not there originally? What about the possibility that this was an impaction further down (treatable by oil, or maybe early surgery), that was *later* complicated due to rolling or gas buildup? Could this ever happen? If it could, then prevention or aggressive treatment earlier (including considering surgery) might have prevented the large bowel from being displaced? (I am assuming here that a twisted/displaced(?) large bowel is definitely inoperable. Right?) I got this idea, in part, from the vet (and just about everyone else) telling me that rolling can cause a twist. So couldn't the twist have come later, maybe just a little before the time she started throwing herself around violently. Another thing I do not understand...if the original problem was the twist just below the stomach, how did she keep packing food in for the period from sometime around Saturday noon until Sunday at 6:00 PM. During that time she was a little off her food and, in retrospect, was already ill - but she ate a HUGE lunch, a dinner, part of breakfast, and a significant amount of grass. Could she have done that with a twist just below her stomach? Additionally, during this whole time, she seemed to produce almost as much manure volume as the other two horses. This sounds to me more like a slowly developing sluggishness of the intestinal tract, then maybe impaction - not a sudden twist? Anyway, I know Steve has better things to do than provide veterinary education online. I appreciate his effort, but still can't put the whole picture together. Maybe someone else has these basics down better than I do? Gail Gail Russell Forestville CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
