Texas Equine Veterinary Association

• 27 • ere are a lot of things about the holiday season that makes us smile and congregate. But a few years back, I had some serious holiday pain. When I say pain, I mean real pain. e kind that curls your toes and makes you long for simple normalcy. It was thanksgiving and one of my favorite clients had a colicked horse. I hate leaving family to go do anything, but I sure didn't want anything bad to happen to this horse so I went to the clinic prepared for the worst. I just didn't know how bad the worst could actually be. Pain...think about that word. Stop reading for just a second and try to remember the most awful pain you can remember having. You can only kind of remember it because God is kind to us and doesn't really allow total recall of the sensation of excruciating pain. He just allows us to remember that it is terrible. e horse was in bad shape. He was in terrible pain, he was rolling around and sweating. Your intestines have no nocioceptors for touch, or heat, or blunt trauma. But they have the most acute receptors for stretch. is means you could take your intestines out and step on them, catch them on fire, punch them, or chew on them...no sensation registered. But blow them up like a balloon, and you will be in agony. Every time I see a horse throw itself on the ground and roll around with that terrible, I am suffering in colic, look on their face, I feel so sorry for them. We went to work as a team. We anesthetized the horse, put in on the table, and started the long and complicated procedure that we call a colic surgery in veterinary medicine. It is very complicated and requires all the skill that a veterinary surgeon can muster up. It requires tremendous focus and attention to detail on the part of the person running the show, and on this night, it was me. ings were going great. We had identified the problems and were in the process of correcting them, when this old familiar feeling began to creep into me. I had encountered this feeling only three times before in my life, but once you have felt it, you will never forget it. Dr. Tweeten was helping me with the surgery. I remember her saying, "Wow Bo, you are sure sweating bad!" It was a cold November night, sweat should not have been an issue. I knew long before she said it that things were fixing to get terrible. I am going to estimate that we were three quarters of the way through the surgery when the hint that pain was about to overtake me entered my mind. It starts off as a quick acute burst of pain in the back just below the last rib. It goes away almost a quickly as it came, but it is like a messenger revealing the fact the you are soon going to your knees and agony will be your companion for a while. Holiday Pain Bo Brock, DVM, DABVP Dr. Tweeten noticed the sweat because it starts when you enter phase two to the painful process. is is the stage when the terrible pain doesn't go away. Men, if you have ever been kicked in the "boys", you know how bad that hurts. It doesn't really hurt in the "boys" themselves, but somewhere in your abdomen that seem totally removed and uninvolved. Just think if that exact pain came, and wouldn't go away. Well that is the feeling that comes when some tiny stone in your kidney decides to dislodge and head for the bladder through this tiny tube called the ureter. I don't know much about this ureter thing except this...it is has a very small opening in it called a "lumen" and it does not like to be stretched. Oh no...it hates to be stretched. It seems that fluid is supposed to go through it and if anything that is hard...like a stone. Tries to treck down that rascal, it causes stretch. And let me tell you, that stretch evokes the most ridiculous pain that I have ever encountered. I knew it was happening. I knew this horses life depended on me finishing the surgery. I knew if I told anyone what was happening before I was to the point of not being needed to save this horse, they would make me quit. So I sucked it up. I am telling you, it hurts. ere is something about the pain that comes with it that makes me want to lay on the ground and roll around like you are on fire and trying to smother the flames. I got to the point that I felt the guts of the horse were all ok, and I told Dr. Tweeten to close without me. I took off my gloves and gown and headed out the door of the surgery room. No one yet knew what was wrong with me, only that I was sweating way too much. I went to the rubber padded floor of the equine clinic and began rolling around like a dog on a carcass. I don't know why that makes me feel better, but it does. If you have ever passed one of these horrid stones, just imagine passing it for 45 minutes while standing up trying to fix a broken horse and not be able to bend over at all. Eventually the rest of the people involved in the surgery saw me rolling around and wanted to know what the heck I was doing. I told them that I was headed home to get some pain pills as soon as I rolled around here for a while and felt like I could drive. Pain. It is the motivation in life that we seldom speak of, but let me tell you, it is a real innovation in what we do. So when horses lay on the ground and roll around from the pain of a colic, let me tell you, Bo Brock runs to get them some pain medicine. I know what sweat and rolling means without a single word being uttered.

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