The Big Day

May 27, 2003 Surgery Day
I met with the surgeon at the 11th hour...just two hours before the surgery was scheduled earlier today. Imagine my dismay to hear that he was not the one feeling quite so optimistic as I had been told for the past week! Much to the contrary, in fact.

The surgeon feels that it is impossible to know how this surgery will work out for Doc. Doc's body may or may not respond to the removal of the cartilage (what the surgery was doing) by building excessive calcium deposits to fuse the joints.

Please pray that his body DOES in fact respond by the fusing of the joints in his hocks. That is what we need for him to be pain free and sound.

The surgeon basically felt that it was too bad that I have such an emotional attachment to Doc, as even if things go well and Doc's joints fuse, we may get a year of pain free riding together (we may get 10 years or more, too!), only to have issues with other joints.

After the surgery, I called at about 4:00 PST and Doc had just stood up for the first time after surgery. He is in recovery most of the rest of today, so I will go visit him later this evening. He has to be in an enclosed stall when he comes home from the clinic...at least for two weeks. I will be going to meet with a lady who may board him for me for two weeks in her barn about 5 minutes from here. Not ideal, but it is the best we can do. Having the flu this weekend set us back a lot. We are still recovering.

If you could pray for the fusing process to occur in record time and for the pain to be minimized, I would appreciate it. I am very selfish, too, as I would love prayer that Doc wouldn't associate his pain with me. The relationship that we have been developing is precious to me and I hate to think of him responding to me as a reaction to the pain. I know he might.

We will be giving him a sedative before transporting him any more.

Thanks so much for caring.

Weds May 28 early morning
Some of you have emailed me asking how Doc is. I will visit him this morning. I did see him about 8:30pm last night and felt very badly at what I saw. He did come to me for comfort, I guess. He didn't want a carrot I offered him. He put his massive head down and I rubbed it through the bars in his stall. I sobbed the entire way home.

I don't know if I can handle this! I guess we can be praying for that! I wanted to put him OUT of his misery and I have given him more. It is so easy to doubt the decision now.

The place I looked at for boarding didn't impress me to say the least. I will call around today.

Thanks for your prayers and notes. I will visit him again this morning.