5/1/07: We do not yet know how this story will end. Lily is a beautiful filly by Don Marco and out of our lovely Imara. At first glance, Lily looked normal but upon closer inspection, it was obvious that something was terribly wrong. Her leg was severely broken, apparently while still in her mother's womb (based on the xrays). She has multiple fractures on her cannon bone, fetlock, pastern, and coffin bone. This is such a rare occurence, none of the vets and surgeons who consulted on this case had ever seen it in a newborn. And since no one knows *exactly* what caused this, no one can say for sure that there aren't other hidden problems that may surface later.

The general consensus is that 99% of people would have euthanized Lily immediately, but she is so bright and strong - seems to be in NO pain at all - and has such a will to live...we had to give her a chance. She has impressed everyone who has met her with her beautiful spirit and I feel strongly that she is here to teach us all a lesson.

On Day 2, I was sure we were going to lose Lily. She seemed weak and wobbly and lethargic and I felt totally helpless (and hopeless!). But she rebounded on Day 3 and seemed to gain 10 pounds and grow an inch. We are at the end of Day 4 as I write this, and she is flourishing and acting like any other youngster...playing and rearing and carrying on, pestering her mother to no end, and she has adapted very well to her "peg leg," which our wonderful equine repro vet, Dr. Michelle Kutzler of Oregon State University, showed us how to make. It was Michelle and her assistant Jen who responded to my frantic call early Saturday morning and rushed out to help us.

Although she has a devastating handicap for one so young, Lily's young age may actually be to her benefit during the healing process (if we can get her to heal), since her bones are so soft and she is growing so rapidly at this time of her life. It is the optimum time for the fractures to fuse. Her splint must be removed and re-set every other day in order to accommodate her growth, and already Lily is getting the hang of things (and so are we!). The first day, it took 6 of us to get her splint on. The second time, we did it with two people (only out of necessity, and it wasn't easy!). The third time, we did it with 3 people and no one got kicked. That's progress in my book.

This entire situation has been an emotional roller coaster for all of us, but none more so than Lily's mom-to-be, Dawn Anderson, who has waited a long time for Lily's arrival. In a gesture of great compassion, Dawn has agreed to entrust Lily to our care and will now be setting her sites on a full sibling to Lily in 2008.

Our hope is that Lily's leg will fuse, and although it may never be (or look) completely normal, many horses can lead healthy, happy lives with handicaps and we will accommodate hers as necessary. She is as stunning (possibly even more so) as her big brother Milan, who we retained for our breeding program. Although we never would have wished for such a tragedy, we are also delighted that - if we are able to get her through this - Lily will be a permanent part of our family like her brother.

My reason for posting this story is to (hopefully) give others hope for their foals with injuries at a young age, and the courage to try even when the situation seems hopeless. Again, we have no way of knowing how this will end...it could very well end VERY badly...but that is part of the life we've all chosen when we decide to own a horse (or 20).

We ask that all of you send as many well wishes and positive thoughts as possible for a happy ending to Lily's story. She will need them if she is to win this battle. There is a long, difficult, very expensive road ahead and odds are unquestionably stacked against her...but she has such an indomitable spirit, we think (hope! pray!) that she will prevail.

Stay tuned for regular updates and please include her in your prayers.

5/05/07

Well, we've made it a week. Happy birthday Lily!

Today Lily celebrated her birthday by having her leg re-splinted...twice. This week has been full of ups and downs, the two biggest 'downs' being that 1.) Lily is getting bigger and MUCH stronger and she doesn't take kindly to be laid down and 2.) any sense of accomplishment I felt at the first two splint applications I did this week has gone out the window because the 3rd and 4th splint wraps were terrible and the minute Lily would put weight on them, they would buckle. VERY frustrating since each splint wrap uses an entire roll of Elasticon and half a roll of cotton padding and a roll of Vetwrap...so they are running us around $20 apiece. Since we resplinted her once yesterday and twice today, my budget for the week is pretty much shot...not to mention the absolutely horrifying feeling I get in the pit of my stomach at the idea of Lily's leg not healing properly because I can't get the splint on correctly!

In light of our downward trend in successful splint wrapping, today Meaza and Debby went to Home Depot in search of new splint materials. Our first splints were made of cut up pieces of PVC pipe, but they were too short so we were having to overlap them in order to cover the entire distance from 3" below the hoof to 1" above the knee. The weakness in the splint was obviously being caused by a combination of the overlapping PVC and the bunched up cotton padding which is a nightmare to work with on a foal's legs. It's huge and cumbersome and the splints just slid all over it. So, time to get creative. M and D came home with several pieces of hardwood moulding, which we wrapped with vetwrap to cushion them and keep them from sliding on the cotton. We also modified our cotton application, splitting the cotton in half (thickness-wise) and then cutting it in half as well, so we effectively had 6" wide, half thickness soft cotton wraps, which were much easier to apply to Lily's tiny leg without gaping. Martha Stewart's got nothing on us!

In the end, we have a MUCH sturdier splint/wrap than ever and Lily's leg is completely immobilized from the front and the side. The back is left open to keep the tendons from weakening and to allow her to bend her knee in the correct direction.

Lily is a trouper...no doubt about it. She has the personality of a mischievous puppy, and I almost felt like I was playing with my lab when I was in the stall with her today. She would RUN as fast as she could right at me, slide to a stop, and then do a little half rear and tear back to the other end of the stall...very obviously playing and wanting me to chase her. The more I sat there, the more wound up she got and I just wish we had had a video camera (or ANY camera, for that matter). She's a doll and she has us all wrapped around her hoof. It's as if she has no idea at all that she is anything other than completely normal, and she just wants to go and play. And as she has unfolded this week, she is so stunningly beautiful, I just can't stop looking at her. The thought of us not getting her through this is like someone squeezing my heart with a vice.

Please continue to send your thoughts and prayers. They are appreciated.

May 9, 2007

Today was Lily's first day outside. It wasn't really a 'planned' outing...we had just changed her splint and were moving her mom, Imara, back into the stall when Lily decided that we weren't moving quite quickly enough and she was ready for lunch (after apparently working up an appetite during all the drama of the splint change). So she just hopped through the rails, scaring me absolutely to death. It was a beautiful day, and now she was out in it, so we just decided to walk down the driveway and see how she did. I've been wanting to put her out, but have been too chicken to do it, worried that she might overdo it. On the other hand, if we are unable to save her, I'd hate for her whole life to have been spent in a stall. So we just decided to live on the edge, for today.

So Lily and Imara got to spend about half an hour outside today. I would have left them out longer, but Imara noticed all the mares in the big pasture out front and started to fret, so enough was enough. She's also on her foal heat and was driving Notorio crazy in the pasture nextdoor. We had considered breeding her, but have decided to wait until her 30-day heat, just to reduce the stress level a little bit around here.

Lily did great, as you can see, and the splint seems to be working well. She has developed one small sore/blister under her wraps, but every vet (and nurse) has already warned us that sores are inevitable. Plus, it's a sore that was already a soft spot on the first day we started wrapping her, so I don't know if it was an injury from the few hours that she ran around before we could get her spints on or what, but it's definitely an issue now. I sprayed it with bluekote and put a telfa pad on it before we re-wrapped her.

Aside from the sore, which I think we'll be able to get under control, we couldn't be happier with how Lily is doing. She has grown and filled out beyond my wildest expectations. She's gorgeous and seems to be thriving. She's always inquisitive and has to be one of the most expressive foals I've ever seen. She's definitely overflowing with personality.

I've been getting emails from many of you reading this page, full of helpful ideas, suggestions, cheaper suppliers for our splint materials, and other miscellaneous input. Now we are even getting an equine sling...an idea/loan from another new friend/admirer of Lily...that will hopefully make it easier to change her wrap as she gets bigger. Thank you SO much! The emails are like a shot of adrenaline. I am constantly amazed at how many caring people there are in the world, and how many of them seem to read our site! If any of you have ideas for how to keep the sore from getting worse under the wraps, I would love to hear them.

Thank you all again.

5/13/07

I am adding this last entry to Lily's page with a heavy heart. One would think that after a certain number of hours, I'd run out of tears but so far that hasn't happened.

Lilly lost her battle last night. It happened so quickly, none of us have quite adjusted to it yet. She went from bright and healthy to death in just a few short hours.

Yesterday morning when we changed her splint, she didn't struggle with us, which was our first sign that something was amiss. However, her leg looked great under the wraps...even the sore was clean and dry and for the first time, her pastern and fetlock appeared to be forming to a more natural angle. It was so encouraging!

However, Imara wouldn't let her nurse when she got up, which caused another small ripple of alarm. But we rationalized that, since Imara is at the end of her foal heat, that could make her ultra sensitive, and would also make Lily a little ill. So we milked Imara ourselves and bottle fed Lily. She nursed VORACIOUSLY and kept whinnying and tossing her head at us whenever we'd have to go back for refills. She was SO adorable and I was commenting on what in the world we were going to do when she was 1000 pounds and still demanding that we dispense her dinner in a bottle. Every time she'd see us, she'd start talking. She seemed weaker than usual, but we chalked it up to Imara not having let her nurse that day. She still seemed bright and her appetite was great, but she felt a little cold and since it was a cool, damp day, we put her blanket on just in case.

When I went to check her mid-afternoon, she was still standing, but obviously more depressed and her breathing was shallow. We tried to bottle feed her some more, and she wouldn't drink. So we laid her down and noticed that her legs, ears, and muzzle were ice cold, although her body was warm under her blanket. So we got a fleece blanket and flannel sheet and some towels and just laid there with her rubbing on her. Her gums were greyish blue and we were terrified that we were losing her. But after about half an hour, she perked up, her gums turned light pink again, and her breathing stabelized. She started talking again and accepted a little bit of milk, and then just laid quietly there under the blankets and went to sleep. We stayed with her for awhile and watched her sleep. Her gums were pink and she looked peaceful so we got up to go finish feeding the evening meal and then walked back down to the house to do some more packing (I'm moving next week).

An hour later when I checked her, she was gone, laying right where we had left her.

We are all still in shock. She was doing so well, I don't think anyone expected that she would crash now. Our vet Michelle warned us that babies can crash very quickly but we have all commented again and again that we felt that we were out of the woods as far as her overall health, and that her ultimate future hinged on how well the leg healed at 8 weeks. Looking back now, in some ways it seems silly that we actually thought we were safe after only two weeks, and all I can say is...the last two weeks have seemed like an eternity. It has felt like at least a month, maybe longer. So obviously we were lulled into a false sense of security. But she was doing SO well...there was never the smallest hint of a problem after day 2, until now. She was so strong and happy and playful...I just never would have dreamed she could change so quickly.

Poor Imara is so forlorn. We moved Lily's body to the other side of the railing, and just left her head under the bottom rail so that Imara could touch her. Debby thought we should remove the cast because she thought Lily would want to leave this life without it, so we went through that grim task for the last time. That had to be the saddest moment...the two of us removing the cast we had so carefully put on yesterday morning.

I slept up there last night on my makeshift bed on top of the alfalfa bales, as I have been doing every night, and Imara was SO quiet. Once this morning I heard her nickering to Lily, but otherwise, silence. She stood in the same spot, right above Lily's head, all night. I think she knew something was wrong before we did yesterday, and started detaching herself from Lily early in the day. Today we started turning out horses, and Imara wanted to go, so we put her outside. Even though she wanted to go out, as soon as she GOT out, she started to panic. We put her with her two closest buddies and across the aisle from Don Marco, and gave everyone an alfalfa treat brunch. That helped a little bit but still, she has been calling for Lily throughout the morning, but no one answers. She's suffering not only from the loss of her filly, but also from her over-abundance of milk and hormones. She already had enough milk for two foals, which was part of Lily's advantage and Lily had her mother's appetite, which only made Imara produce more. Now poor Imara is swollen and dripping and miserable. This is a very sad Mother's Day for her, and for all of us.

Now comes the dreaded question of what to do with her. Part of me would like to take her to the vet school and let them open her up and see what happened. But I just can't bring myself to do that to her after everything she's already been through...not to mention that it would be unbearable to find out that we could have saved her if we'd only done "one more thing." We went so far out on a limb for her, it's hard to know how far to keep going and when to say "it's meant to be this way for some reason" and just stop. And burying her seems out of the question, especially since I'm moving soon and we'd be leaving her behind (plus none of us have ever dug a grave that big). And having the renderer come get her is out of the question. So the only remaining option is to load her up tomorrow and take her to Portland to be cremated. Even the thought of that is horrible, but there aren't a lot of other alternatives at this point.

Thank you so much to all of you who have lent your support, either physically, emotionally, or otherwise...my sister Meaza, roommate Debby, stall cleaner Charity Newton, trainer Brooke Storms, Judy Plumbtree, Dawn Anderson, Cynthia Mercer, Terri Meador, Stella Taylor, Dave Dunlap, Michelle Kutzler, Jen (I'm sorry Jen, I don't know your last name), Terry Gerros and to so many more of you who have emailed and are monitoring Lily's progress...to all of you I owe a huge debt of gratitude, and I know Lily would thank you too.

In spite of this sad ending, and despite the stress, heartache, bruises and sore muscles we all endured over the last 14 days, I wouldn't have changed a thing. Lily's life, although short, was worth living and she definitely touched all of us with her spirit. We will always cherish the two weeks we spent with her. She had a good life, and made ours better for knowing her.

Rest in Peace Lily. 4/28/07 - 5/12/07

PS: (afterthought - 5/14/07)

I was working on the info below to add to Lily's page this week. Now it seems somewhat pointless, however, I'm going to go ahead and post this and leave it up here for awhile since splinting is a relatively common thing in newborn foals with contracted tendons. Ours was an uncommon case because of the severity of the break but this may still help some of you.

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Just a few words on splinting. It sounds simple enough, right? Wrong. It's not simple...at all...at least not from my experience. Then again, this wasn't a typical splinting case. But for any of you who ever need to splint your foals, even in a more simple case, this is the system we've come up with, through process of elimination.

Your priorities are many, but for us, first and foremost we didn't want to do more damage to Lily. And second, we didn't want to get hurt. And believe me, foals may look fragile, but even a day old foal can do some serious damage with those back hooves. And each day they get much stronger and they very quickly learn to anticipate your next move. So be very careful and I'd recommend a minimum of 3 able-bodied, confident people...5 is ideal.

Our procedure goes something like this:

First, either remove the mare or have someone (a 4th person) hold her safely out of the way. If you remove her, make sure you have an area where she can look into the stall (hang her head in!) and where the foal can see and hear her. Keep all other horses far away. This is paramount unless you want a mare leaping in on top of you unexpectedly, and it will also keep the foal calmer. It also helps to throw the mare a flake of alfalfa because this is going to take awhile, even if everything goes smoothly.

There are typically three of us (myself, Meaza (or Brooke), and Debby) who are working on Lily regularly. Debby and I coordinate our maneuvers and get Lily laid down, which is never as easy as it sounds. Then Meaza controls Lily's hindquarters and tries to keep us from getting killed, Debby controls Lily's head and neck and tries to keep her from getting up enough momentum to kick with her hindquarters, and I play doctor and pretend I know how to wrap a broken leg and try to keep everything clean and avoid being struck or kicked while we work on the floor of the stall with an occasionally thrashing baby. Again, easier said than done. That seems to be the recurring theme through all of this.

Cutting off the old splint requires herculean strength in the hands and forearms...you would not believe how tough the bandages and cotton wrap are, especially with as many layers as we have to put on in order to hold each splint in place against the leg and against each other. So get some good scissors for your first aid kit. The ones they give you don't work worth beans in a situation like this. We even invested in the same scissors that paramedics use, and I am still sweating by the time I get to the top (or bottom) of Lily's bandages.

When it comes to re-wrapping, someone has to support Lily's knee so that I can pull against it to get the wrap tight...but not twist it her leg in the process. The leg also has to be elevated so that I can pull the wrap underneath it. Debby lays her upper body over Lily's neck (Lily, being the good girl that she is, normally stops struggling by this time) and supports the knee and can stretch her fingers down in a pinch to also help hold the cotton in place while I wrap. It takes 2 hands (4 would be better) to hold the cotton and the splints in place while the elasticon is unrolled over it...and the elasticon itself it like rubber cement on a roll. Unrolling it around a tender broken leg without yanking it requires a mixture of finesse and strength that I never knew I had (and thank goodness Debby has long fingers). I've perfected the art of holding the bottom of the splint between my knees while Debby holds Lily's knee, so that I have something to pull against without hurting Lily's leg. Once the first splint is secure, it gets much easier because the leg is stabelized and I'm pulling against the wood and the cotton rather than Lily herself.

The splints have to be perfectly straight and the wrap has to be as tight as you can pull it because the rolled cotton cushions everything and there are air pockets inside. If it's not tight or straight, everything will slip either up or to the side as soon as she stands up, which means, at the very least, you have to lay the foal down and start all over again.

We experimented with all kinds of wraps, bandages, vetwrap, duct tape, polo wraps, standing wraps, self-adhesive bandages...even old tube socks...and the list goes on. There were times when we'd have to re-wrap several times because some new ingredient would fail, and if one part fails, it all fails. Our final list of supplies are: elasticon, duct tape, rolled cotton, vetwrap, a plastic baggie, and 3 pieces of moulding. The elasticon is the most expensive item, but it is unavoidable. Many of you who have written have suggested self-adhesive bandages, and thank you, but unfortunately, they don't work because they only stick to themselves. You need something that sticks to EVERYTHING - and elasticon is the ticket. It is annoyingly sticky and strong, but it is what you need. Duct tape also does not work...it doesn't stretch enough, plus it doesn't breathe and will cause moisture underneath. We use duct tape around the bottom of the wrap, where it touches the ground. I roll up a ball of cotton, compress it into the bottom of the split (as an imaginary hoof), pull a baggie over it and then tape the entire thing firmly to the splint/bandage so there is a shock absorber on the bottom.

Once it's all done, we count to three, release and step back, and Lily just hops up like a little deer. Toward the end, we started giving her a syringe of milk replacer mixed with molasses as a little treat/thank you. She LOVED that and if she had made it, I think that might have been the ticket to our success as she grew larger.

Throughout all of this, I have meant to get photos while we were splinting but in every case, if there was ever an extra person around, they ended up with a job that didn't involve photography. So unfortunately, we were never able to get photos with the bandages off.