Behold Ginger Rogers’ awesome pair of pus-bags.
Well, technically they’re not pus-bags. The vet says “generalized cellulitis.” Well, what does she know? ‘Pus-bags’ is more poetic, and therefore more accurate.
In any event, the facts are these: poor Ginger Rogers is afflicted with a hideous oozing inflammation, as well as with 15 or 20 hard, walnut-sized lumps over the rest of her body (a few of which are also oozing), and nobody knows what’s causing it.
I spoke to one vet on the phone who suggested that it might be onchocerciasis, a pretty disgusting situation involving the larvae of a delightful species of parasite called the neck threadworm. But the vet I saw yesterday said, no, onchocerciasis doesn’t usually present with huge, goopy edema.
She thought it was pigeon fever. Which totally pissed me off, since the first thing I’d said when we walked in was “whatever you do, do not utter the words ‘pigeon fever’.” That’s because pigeon fever is another one of those gory horse diseases that fall into the GAPF category: ghastly abcesses, potentially fatal.
The vet, a woman of science, said we could do a culture, and the culture would take 7 days, and would cost $100, and even if negative wouldn’t actually rule out pigeon fever, but would definitely rule it in if it came back positive.
A hundred bucks for an inconclusive lab test? Hell yeah! Sign me up! I thought you’d never ask!
Meanwhile, the vet performed an ultrasound on the pus-bags. She was looking for the pus pockets typical of pigeon fever. I studied the ultrasound screen over her shoulder, nodding and pretending to grasp what I was looking at.
“Congratulations,” I told Ginger Rogers. “It’s a girl.”
“Good one,” said the vet. Her dispirited tone seemed to suggest that I was not the first crone to witticize thusly while her horse’s pus-bags were getting ultrasounded for pigeon fever.
And so it came to pass that no pus pockets were observed, whereupon I smirked the cronal smirk of relief. With pigeon fever now somewhat less likely, the vet’s next bright idea was fire ants.
Fire ants? Come on. Even if Ginger Rogers had rolled luxuriantly in a fire ant mound — not beyond the realm of possibility, as she’s not the sharpest knife in the drawer — I was skeptical that she could have managed to get stung so symmetrically along the ventral midline. And besides, fire ant bites result in many little pustules, not big-ass pus-bags and isolated, hard-yet-oozing bumps. As a world-renowned expert on equine ant bites, I rejected this theory.
In the end (pending the results of the $100 culture), I was forced to accept a diagnosis of “hypersensitivity.” Hypersensitivity to what I still don’t know. Perhaps to the Christian rock constantly blaring from the truck parked at the barn construction site. Or maybe, like me, Ginger Rogers is hypersensitive to country life. I’d have massive swellings, too, if it weren’t for my daily dose of margaritas.