Cody's Knee X-rays

So the vet student that used to board with us got me copies of Cody's knee x-rays from her two visits to MSU.  These are all before surgery.  Can't wait to see x-rays in March after it's healed and fully fused!

How's she doing?  So, so.  She has good days and bad days.  It is a three month healing process, as that is on average how long it takes for a broken bone to heal, and basically her surgery destroyed the cartilage between the top and bottom bones of the injured joint so the two bones will now fuse themselves together into one.  Better explanation can be found here.

It's been a month now, but Dr. Caron warned me that I won't see much improvement in lameness for 2 to 2 1/2 months, and she won't be sound until 3 to 3 1/2 months.  So it's hard to say how she's doing, because she's definitely lame. 

She was doing pretty good there for a while, I almost had her off bute, but then we got a nice one day thaw, just enough to rut the pastures up something awful, then it froze solid again and the horses can barely walk on it.  And she's been awful sore again since that freeze.  I'm sure the uneven ground isn't helping much, and some of it might be sore/bruised feet, since she is a thin soled tender foot.  But if I leave her in a stall for more than 12 hours, she's even more sore than she is on the uneven ground outside. 

So I guess this is the bad part about doing surgery in the winter, but on the up side, it keeps her from moving around too much and doing anything too stupid.  So, it's still a waiting game........

(pics aren't the sharpest since they are scaled way down)

Cody's right knee from the December visit the day before surgery, looking very nice and neat and clean and arthritis free, looking how a normal knee is supposed to look:

Cody's left knee after getting kicked in the knee back in Feb 2010.  The first one is basically the same view angle as the one above of the right knee.  The top ones are from December the day before surgery.  The bottom two are from the June visit when we finally found the problem.  You can see the arthritis and the collapsing lower joint.  That lower joint that is such a mess is the one that is fusing itself now after surgery, and you can see from the flexion x-ray that bottom joint doesn't move much at all, it's the other two joints that have all the motion.