We slowly weaned Trav off of the bute and after two weeks his course of antibiotics was over. You could tell that the eye still caused him discomfort; he had become very headshy and kept it closed nearly all of the time-- the vet said that once the injury itself had healed this pain should subside.
A few weeks later we noticed that there was some discharge coming from the eye and it seemed hot to the touch. Crap. After another week on antibiotics and eye-drops, I wish I could say there was marked improvement….there wasn’t. The vet explained that because of the extensive injury to the eye, it no longer acted like an eye, it was more like an open wound.
It was now time to take a step back and look at the situation. Why were we leaving the eye in? There was no hope of him regaining vision and it was causing him persisting intense pain. We weren’t leaving it in for him….it was purely for us.
This lead us on to option 2, having the eye removed (enucleation).
So, long story short, the surgery went smoothly and Traveller was officially a one-eyed horse.
I apologize, I don't have access to my scanner at the moment so we will have to make due with a more recent picture!
We opted not to have a prosthetic ball placed in the socket due to the advice of the vet who said that the skin will often sink around it and look quite odd and that it can cause itching.
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