I have been putting off writing my next post for months because of the bad news. Many of my family and friends already know, but for those of you that do not, I'll throw the bad news out there first to get it over with. We did not know this at first, but it turned out that Phil somehow came out of his cyst-removal surgery with a second injury. When we went to rescan him to monitor his healing progress, we found a tear in a tendon in that same area. This was quite devastating news, but fortunately I have a great team of people around me that helped set up a procedure that would give Phil the best possible prognosis. Dr. Ober arranged for Phil to go in earlier this summer to have stem cells taken out of the bone marrow from his sternum. Weeks later, after the cells 'cooked' in the lab, he went in and had them injected into his problem area to help speed the healing process. He is still currently in stall rest, but getting 15-20 minutes of hand walking per day, plus some grazing time! He seems quite happy, and we are hoping that he can start getting turned out fairly soon.
On to the good news.
First, I graduated college!!!! It is such a weight lifted off my shoulders to be done with classes, homework, studying, and test taking! But I must say that now school season is back in session, I actually do miss it a little. More than anything, I miss my close friends I made over the last four years there. But luckily, many of them are attending grad school, or landing jobs fairly close in the DC area, so I still get to see some of them reasonably often. But I am happy to say that the only tests I will be studying for this year are my dressage tests. :)
Oh, and I almost forgot, for graduation, my parent's present to me was a new english black lab puppy! My roommate Miriam and I named her Na'vi (it's from Avatar, in case you were wondering!)
Second, I just found a new horse! Karen told me about a brother of Phil's from the same farm in Louisiana, so I went down to look at him, and the rest was history. He has been in Virginia with me for over 2 weeks now, and I am irrevocably falling in love with this horse. His name is Calvin, and he is a chestnut, not a bay like Phil and Nalu (Phil's other brother that Kelly owns/rides at the farm). Calvin is quite green in the jumping phases, so we will have to start at the bottom levels until he gains enough experience to start moving up, but I am exceedingly excited about his future!
Calvin-left, Phil-right..brothers!!
That's all for now! :)
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