Well, Sunday night Pickle went down again with a mega
hypp attack. This time he was down for over 4 hours.I started out
giving him Karo, sugar syrup, and calcium gel (plain w/o K). Gave
that several tries and an hour later he's still flat out. He could
still move one front leg and was perfectly able to bang his head on
the ground until he had his front teeth bloodied but the rest of him
was absolutely paralyzed. I had 3 liters of fluids w/5% dextrose and
some injectable calcium on hand for just such an event so I set the
catheter and gave every drop of every thing we had available. He
showed absolutely no improvement so I got back on the phone and had
my vet come out with more fluids. She gave him 3 more bags plus some
more calcium which was all she had in the truck and then went back to
the clinic to gather more supplies. Thank God, by the time she got
back in approx 20 minutes, Pickle was finally on his feet. This
attack was really weird though, because instead of seeing the tremors
sort of fade away when he got up, they just kept going for another
hour or so, even though we hooked him up with even more dextrose
solution and walked him constantly. Eventually, at 3:30am I was able
to tuck him in for the night. I think he rested better than I
did, 'cause I was up every hour on the hour until feeding time at 7am
checking on my boy.
This was the first attack in right at a month, and the first since he
started acetazolamide 1250mg BID. He is also on ranitidine for
suspected ulcers 3600mg BID. He has not actually been scoped but
after starting the ranitidine, his appetite definitely improved. He
had been doing so well on the acetazolamide that I was beginning to
think about putting him back to work. At this point though, I'm not
sure he's stable enough to chance it. I have sent feed and hay
samples in to a lab for analysis, but that probably won't be back for
a couple of weeks. He's currently eating Buckeye training formula
(.9% K) mixed with oats to help average down the K. He absolutely
refuses to eat plain oats and will actually go "hungry" for days to
avoid them. His hay is alfalfa with some grass flakes tossed in to
give him something to munch on 24/7 because of the ulcer problem. I
don't want his tummy being empty at any time. He's turned out a
minimum of 2 hours daily but usually 6-8 hours unless it's pouring
down a cold rain here (he's under lights and so has no winter woolies
to guard against it).

I am really hoping that something shows up amis in the hay analysis.
I know that sounds weird, but if they find some off the chart K
levels then I can change that and get this horse on track. We're
having a devil of a time getting hay this year (as are all the other
horse people in the US), so it'll be difficult to find replacement
hay for him. But I suppose if I have to, I will scrounge some up
somewhere.

I am wondering if the discomfort of ulcers is stressing him enough to
cause episodes?

If anyone out there with a severely symptomatic horse has any
suggestions, I would surely love to hear them. I really hate to say
this because I truly and deeply love this horse, but I'd honestly
rather bury Pickle than have to keep seeing him go thru these
episodes. He's back off feed again and has been pretty lethargic
since Sunday. Actually he was VERY depressed yesterday, but seemed a
small bit improved today. This is how it always is when he actually
goes down with an episode. The darn thing doesn't end with him
getting up. It makes him feel awful for nearly a week!
Lydia