Finally Answers!

I am not the only one who has been dealing with health issues for a long time. Comrade has been having weight loss, diarrhea, making weird mouth gestures, having a hard time eating food, swollen tongue and mouth ulcers off and on for almost 10 months. Peggy has had the vet and the dentist out, put him on tummy medicine, changed his food, gave him lunches, but nothing has worked. Just like me he would be good, then having an extremely bad day.

We worried he would colic from not eating. Well Sunday he was the worst we had seen him. During it all he has always eaten his food. It may take him an hour, but he wanted the food. Sunday Comrade could not eat even really mushy food. He tried, but then would go to the water trough and stick his head in like an alligator and wash the food out of his mouth. For the first time, Comrade walked away from his food and he did not even attempt to eat hay. Larry told Peggy she had to get the vet out the next day.
Luckily the vet made it out a couple hours after her call. Comrade did not even want to graze. So not him. The vet found his tongue swollen, but not reactive to manipulation. So they took x-rays of his head at various angles. Both Mom and Peggy saw something, but waited until the vet confirmed. He had a possible foreign object in his tongue.
This was not something he could handle and recommended Comrade go to Morven (Marion Dupont) and see the mouth specialist. Even better the vet was able to get him in the same day. So Mom and Peggy loaded him up and took him in. They said that the drugs our vet gave him brought his appetite back and he ate some hay when he got to Morven.
Morven has a CT scan for horses which is the biggest reason Comrade was sent there. And sure enough his tongue lit up with an object. The hard part was that it was in so deep they could not pinpoint its location. An ultrasound showed a massive abscess in the tongue but not the object. Mom and Peggy left him in the vet's care and headed home.
They were going to open the abscess and hoped the object was in the same area while he was standing. Unfortunately they did have to drop him and use the fluoroscope to locate. They removed an 1 1/2 inch wire from his tongue.

 They believe the intermittent bad days were when the tongue would swell from infection and then resolve. The vet said getting a foreign object in the tongue is not a frequent happenstance in horses. Comrade stayed at the vets yesterday and was already eating hay even with on open wound on his tongue. Gotta love Cobs. Today he was supposed to come home, but he popped a fever. Hopefully all the good medicines will get him on track and we will have our fun cob boy back home soon.
It is such a relief to finally have answers. We felt helpless as he struggled. Sometimes it is so hard to get the urgency of a situation across to a vet. So send healing vibes to the big Red Boy!
Oh and DaVinci is doing so much better. His swelling is nearly gone and the bites are no longer as angry.