Infected Hock - rear leg joint

As I mentioned in the post yesterday, Hope had started to stop bearing weight on one of her rear legs. They took x-rays yesterday and did a nerve test and things looked normal. They wanted to pull fluid from her joint and test for infection since in horses the septic conditions can go into their joints. Not really normal for alpacas. This morning, I was told that the joint is infected with a white blood cell count of 150K in the fluid joint. *sigh* One step forward and a huge step back. The concern now is to get it treated and hope it doesn't spread to other joints or the bone. They flushed the joint with saline and injected it with antibiotics. They will do this every day. She said Hope is sore and they are giving some pain meds to her. At noon, they are increasing the pain med dose because she seems uncomfortable right now. She said they don't want to increase this med too much because it is also a sedative along with a pain med. If this evening she still seems to be in pain then they will use banamine or another pain med. They don't like to use these in neonates since it has effects on the kidney's - a more serious problem.

In a day or two, they will take x-rays again of both the leg and lungs. Hopefully, we will see improvement in the lungs and leg. They will pull fluid from the joint in a day or two, too, to check the levels and make sure they are on top of it.

Poor little Hope. I hope she has enough fight in her to fight this next infection. Unfortunately, it also means that there is no time frame on when she can come home. Keep this little one in your thoughts and prayers.

The good news is that she is really taking off on the bottle so they will increase her milk consumption. Her weight isn't going up, yet. Hopefully with getting milk it will put some weight onto her.