You can never be prepared for bad news. I know I wasn't when my mom picked me up from school Aug. 27, 2001, the day after we got back from the World’s Championship Horse Show in Louisville, Ky., to tell me that my horse, Carboness, had undergone surgery the night before and that she was lucky to have made it through the night alive.
Carboness started showing signs of colic in the trailer on the way home from Louisville. Luckily, there was a man in the back with the horses, and he noticed something was wrong with her and banged on the trailer to let the driver know. Dennis, the driver for Drexler Horse Transportation Co. stopped the truck and he also knew something was not right. He phoned ahead to his wife Mary Jo, (Royal Scot Stable’s barn manager), and had her call our local vet who met the truck at the barn. When they saw Carboness they immediately knew she was in trouble.
They loaded Carboness on to the Drexler truck with my trainer, Kenny Smith, and rushed her to the Equine Veterinary Associates in Delevan, Wis. where Dr. Stone is on call. Carboness passed out twice and went down in the trailer during the forty-minute drive. Thank God Kenny was able to get her up.
By the time she got inside the clinic, Carboness was in so much pain and so dehydrated that she passed out again. Only this time it was on the cement floor. My other trainer, Donna Smith, was about 30 minutes behind the trailer on the way home. As soon as she found out about Carboness, Donna and her dad, Mr. Pettry rushed up to the clinic. Donna walked in the clinic to see Carboness on the floor about 30 seconds after she had fallen down. This was definitely not your normal colic. At that point, they weren't sure Carboness was still alive.
Once they realized Carboness was still alive, Dr. Stone, Kenny, Dennis, Mary Jo, and the rest of the staff did everything to stabilize her. Once she was finally stable, she went into surgery. When Dr. Stone got into her stomach though, there was a big problem. She had a fatty tumor, called a lipoma, about the size of a man’s fist on a stem, and her intestines had wrapped around it. It was so bad Dr. Stone had to call my parents in the middle of the surgery to ask if he should keep going. She had about a 20% chance of making it through the night alive. the first words that came out of my dad’s mouth were, “Save the horse.” Dr. Stone kept working and ended up taking out the tumor along with three other that weren't causing any problems at the time, but could in the future. He also took twenty-five feet of her intestines that had been cut off from the twisting.
Mary Jo and Dennis stayed at the clinic until the surgery was half over, and Donna, Kenny, and Mr. Pettry stayed until Carboness stood up in the recovery room. From the start, Dr. Stone knew that Carboness was a very loved horse. He stayed up with her that night and for 5 nights after that. He even stayed with her on his night off.
The whole staff at the Equine Veterinary Associates were so nice to my mom and I. The first day we went to see Carboness, I was very nervous about what the clinic was like. I just wanted my horse to live, but I knew she had a better chance to survive in a nice place. When we walked in, the front looked like a doctor’s office, except for the oversized operating rooms that you could see from a viewing window. they looked like a human operating room, except they were a lot larger.
We walked through the front and down to the ICU were Carboness was. I just started crying when I saw her. There were 4 1-gallon IV bags that were connected to the ceiling connected to Carboness with a coily IV connection so she could walk around the stall and not know it was there. You would think it was pretty cool if it weren’t your horse the IV was connected to. The ICU was also air-conditioned, and that told me this place was nice enough for me not to worry as much. I had more important things to worry about; like that my horse could die.
Dr. Stone dropped what he was doing and came over to introduce himself. He was very nice and told me what Carboness had to overcome to get better. He told me enough information about what happened to make me feel informed, but not enough for me to freak out. We drove 2 hours to the clinic almost everyday that she was there, and every time we would get there he would leave another one of his patients, or drop what he was doing to come tell us how she was doing, and what she had to overcome that day. Every day the nurses would unhook her IV for me so I could walk her outside for 15 short minutes. I savored those fifteen minutes, because I knew that might be the last time I ever got to be with her.
The first two days were bad, there was a lot more negative than positive, but the third day was the worst. If she didn't get her appetite back, go to the bathroom, and if her stomach had to keep getting pumped, within the next 24 hours we would have to make some serious decisions. When Dr. Stone called that fourth morning and told us she had a good night, and that she accomplished all of her goals, I think it must have been one of the happiest moments of my life. The night before I had cried myself to sleep thinking that she might not make it through the night, and now I was crying because I was so happy. It was so nice of Dr. Stone to call that morning because if he hadn’t I would have worried all day long until I saw her for myself.
When we went to see her on the fourth day, it was a whole different experience. Unlike the days before where she was too sick to even eat the five bites of grass she was offered, on the fourth day she wanted to eat grass for hours. Obviously she couldn’t eat for hours, but at least she wanted to.