The Birth of Frankenfoster

It’s been a strange and stressful past few days, starting with an emergency trip to the local vet school with someone else’s bleeding and somewhat sedated horse in my trailer, followed Sunday with my return to the vet school with my own horse in tow.

And ending with my horse becoming radioactive.

After getting the second opinion of another vet, it became obvious that with 3 out of 4 legs looking wonky, traditional diagnostic tests (flexions, nerve blocking, etc) would not necessarily be the best way to see what’s going on. Instead, she recommended I get a bone scan done, which means injecting the horse with a radioactive isotope and taking pictures of the horse’s entire body. The horse will “light up” at the points of inflammation, including where tendons connect to bone if there are problems there, etc. Unfortunately the process also means that the horse will emit low levels of radiation for approximately 24 hrs, which means Foster will be at the vet school until tomorrow afternoon/evening when I pick him and his wounded barn buddy up.

Foster’s opinion of the proceedings

Ideally the pictures will show us exactly what areas we need to concentrate on, and lead to a plan for getting ~~Frankenfoster~~ my pony back to 100%. I’m loathe to put any kind of speculation on here, because I’m fairly sure there will be some surprises when I get the results Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday. So in the meantime I continue to ask everyone to send prayers, good karma, awesome juju, whatever our way that what we find is manageable.

My horse has a powerful glare when he wants to

Glare stare

Until then, keep your fingers crossed!

14 thoughts on “The Birth of Frankenfoster”

Sending tons and tons of my most powerful juju to you and Fosterpants!

Sending positive vibes!!! Hoping you get positive news and get to the bottom of it!

Sending tons of good thoughts your way! Foster is one of my favorite blogger horses. Hopefully this will help figure some things out.

Sending positive thoughts your way.

Sorry that you and Foster have to go through this, but sorta excited to live vicariously through your experience. I learned about bone scans last summer at UGA, but we didn’t go over very much media. I hope they share pictures with you! ..And, you know, that the point of the scan gets resolved. 🙂

Good luck! I will be sending you good thoughts.

Heaps of healthy vibes sent Foster’s way, and his barnmate too.

Hope you find some clear answers that are easy to fix!

I fully commiserate on the radioactive pet woes…hang in there, Foster!!

i’m so sorry it has come to this – but really hope that perhaps this more comprehensive look at Foster will give a clearer idea of the path forward. wishing you the best of luck!