Equine Internal Medicine- "Spitfire"

I feel so blessed to have been involved in Spitfire's life, as short as it was.

He came in as a 10 day old pony foal who had intermittently had fevers, fast heart rates and fast breathing since he was born. When we asked his owners more, they said that he sometimes dribbles milk out his nose when he's been laying down.

When we were looking at chest radiographs to look for aspiration pneumonia, the radiologist said "Well, if this was a dog, I would say this looks like a persistent right aortic arch (PRAA)." We didn't really do much about it then, but when I brought up the radiologist's comment again in rounds, we decided to pursue it a little further. I got sent over to the small animal hospital to talk to people who might know more about PRAAs, because it isn't something that's really reported in horses (9 times in large animals in general, it turns out.)

It got everyone all twitterpated and very excited. He had a lot of very good prognositic factors. After that, it was a very emotional rollercoaster between doing the surgery or euthanizing him.

In the meantime, Spitfire and I really bonded. I named him Spitfire because he had such a delightful personality. He was full of spunk and silliness. He'd walk right up to people and chew on their pants or lab coat. The emergency/overnight students who did his midnight-2AM treatments called him Chompers. He liked to run and buck around the paddock outside when we turned them out in the morning. He liked to steal stethescopes and carry them around his stall. His mother put up with him with goodnatured grace. Overall, he was just a little spitfire. (His owners ended up naming him something else, but I still like Spitfire better.)


Sadly, the surgical attempt to correct his congenital defect didn't go as planned. It ended up going really poorly and he was euthanized on the table. We all knew it was a real long shot that he'd make it, but that doesn't make it any less sad.