I have been fighting this issue since last August. Maresy came in with what looked like a typical tick bite on her belly - crusty, oozing a bit. I treated with triple antibiotic cream, the way I usually treat tick bites. But this one kept oozing and then a few days later, her entire belly blew up with massive edema – looked like two five inch diameter sausages had been stuffed under her skin, running from flank to girth line on either side. And she started dripping lymph fluid from an area just slightly forward and to the left of her belly button, close to the original tick bite site.
My vet treated her with huge amounts of antibiotics, ran CBCs, Lyme tests, etc, etc, etc. We could get the edema reduced and the dripping stopped for short periods of time, but as soon as the antibiotics cleared her system, the weeping returned. A referral to Leesburg Equine Medical Center for a belly tap and more extensive ultrasound of her belly yielded nothing, other than several vets standing around saying “wow, we’ve never seen that before”, as the mare stood there with a puddle of lymph fluid forming on the floor under her.
Leesburg recommended steroids. We’re now into our third round of that and the same pattern is showing up. She’s dry and has reduced edema as long as the steroid dose is high, but everything starts up again as soon as we wean her down to a lower dose. And maresy and I are getting thoroughly sick of the daily dosing routine.
We tried Low Level Laser Therapy to try to stimulate healing in the lymph system in the area of the weeping - an interesting procedure but seems to have failed since maresy is dripping again.
The working theory of the moment is that she possibly had an umbilical cord infection as a foal and part of it got walled off but has now broken loose or otherwise changed to impact the flow of lymph fluid. The three ultrasounds have showed nothing we can pinpoint as a source or cause, i.e., no debris from a puncture wound, no knot or thickening in any area that would cause a change in lymph fluid flow. Leesburg wants to do exploratory surgery to see what is going on. I’m not up for that – it’s major surgery, with no clear target area, and no definable outcome at the moment.
So, friends in CotH, anybody have an experience with something similar?
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