Yesterday Vento had his first treatment to try and heal the tendon in his hind leg. It’s called “Shock Wave Therapy”, and they use concentrated sound waves. Rather like an ultra-sound, but much stronger. The vet told me if I held my hand in front of the machine it would hurt.
As he explained it, tendons don’t like to heal because there isn’t enough blood flow. They heal partway, but never all the way, and since they are weaker than they should be you can reinjure the leg when the horse goes back to work.
So the shock wave therapy does minute damage to the tendon to force more blood to the area, and push the healing past where it would normally stop.
This will be done three times over nine weeks, and then they will do another ultra-sound of his leg. Right now I’m doing the hand walk thing twice a day, and he’s being a good kid about it. Occasionally he does the parrot mouth with his upper lip, and tries to nip me, but I’m holding a loop of lead rope, and I’ve gotten very good at smacking his nose. He’s almost to the point that if I make an “uh, uh” sound, he pulls his head back. If nothing else he will have perfect ground manners once this is all over.
I got a copy of my ultra-sound, and Lauren is going to send it to some top flight vet out in San Diego for a second opinion. I’m hoping he will tell me it’s not as bad or as dire as the vet here has made it out to be. This guy is a good vet, but he is very, very negative. So, keep your fingers crossed for me and Vento.
There is also stem cell treatment that we could try if we’re not satisfied with the shock wave therapy. Wow, my horse can get stem cell treatments, but there’s very little of that for humans. Wonder whose fault that is? Oh wait, probably the clowns who ran this country for eight years.
