Help with Medical Bills for My Horse

Hi Friends, I'm Kip Mistral and I am here on behalf of my dear Andalusian, Valentin, who has a mysterious bacterial infection that is under careful veterinary treatment.

I say mysterious because he was first seen by a DVM on August 14 after I noticed he had diffuse swellings (edema) all over his body. He had a needle biopsy of one of the swellings, and blood tests; the verdict was a bacterial infection but no abscess activity. He was treated with Uniprim (antibiotic) , Phenylbutazone ("bute") and Omeprazole (Ulcer gard) and began to improve shortly. He was rechecked 5 days later by the vet and new blood tests confirmed the high infection reading (460 when normal is <50) was now down to normal at 11.

The swellings were down to almost nothing and I thought we were "over" it, or nearly so, when on September 14 I noticed that Val now had quite a large bulky swelling on his neck fairly high up.

I was pretty shocked by this overnight development and called the vet to return, which she did the next day. She and her technician did numerous needle biopsies and another blood test. The results of the labs will take around 10 business days.

In the meantime, he's been prescribed minocycline, an antibiotic which is most advantageous for bacterial infections, which is apparently hard to obtain. I had to send away for it and it is a week at least out for delivery.

The rather shocking thing about Val's case is that the swellings move around overnight in an exaggerated way. The swelling on his chest after a short grazing walk will decrease by 1/2 of volume. The next night some swelling will reappear on his belly.

The vets might think this is "pigeon fever" except they have never seen that disease start and progress in this bizarre way.

In the last month, the bills have run up to nearly $2,000 so far. It is not over, clearly. When I acquired Val 20 years ago all was well financially but things have changed. I am far over my head with these expenses.

I also have valuable equestrian items to sell and services to offer in exchange for payments, if anyone wants to contact me directly for details.

A dear friend offered to host a gofundme campaign. But yesterday another friend said she would be more likely to contribute directly to a campaign rather than to a go-between person. So I decided to not risk my friend wasting her time as a busy full-time working professional, for little or no avail.

Kindest regards,

Kip Mistral