Vaccines, inflammation, and ERU?

I will, RC! I'm interested to hear what she thinks too. I adore my vet but sometimes I wish she would be a bit more like "Well, we should do this!" instead of all "Well, we could do this, or this, or THIS!!" However, I suppose I would probably like her a whole heck of a lot less if she told me what to do constantly. Haha!

That's an interesting idea Sunny! I've had that done with my cat but have never heard of doing that for a horse... I wonder. I'll ask. :) I wonder if drawing blood would be less stressful...huh, never thought about it before! I'll definitely have to ask. Lacey's pretty cool as a cucumber about shots, etc (pretty sure it helps that we usually do them on her blind-er side so she doesn't see the needle coming and tense up) but who knows!

Ok, Celeste. I think I took it the wrong way. Your last sentence came across as really harsh/condescending as I was reading it. Water under the bridge! Sorry for jumping down your throat. :)
And I totally agree with you on principle. Death from some sort of animal/insect-borne virus is definitely worse than one-time increased inflammation! I suppose I could always increase Lacey's anti-inflammatories/painkillers on shot day to help combat any possible issues. That would probably help a lot and I would feel better!

I'm not sure I would vaccinate. I have immune system issues and I avoided the flu vaccine this year because there was absolutely no way of knowing how I would react to it. For me, I would rather risk getting the flu than getting vaccinated and having life long permanent damage from the vaccine. Plus there are case reports of the flu vaccine "triggering" the same autoimmune disease I have.

Has the horse reacted to the vaccine before? If he did not react before, he may be okay to vaccinate. I don't know if they have studied vaccination in ERU horses to see if there is any link between vaccination and flare ups.

The only thing I could find on google was that they do not recommend vaccinating horses against lepto. Because the vaccine can possibly cause ERU.

Other vaccines like eastern and western may be safe because they do not trigger the same autoimmune response. With lepto (both the virus and possibly the vaccine) the body is tricked into attacking the eyes.

I think vaccine titration tests are a good idea if in doubt.

I thought I would just update with what my vet and I decided to do.
The vet was out today to do Miss L's teeth so we got the chance to discuss vaccines. :)

Bottom line, we decided to forgo vaccines for right now.
Apparently the only real concerns, vaccine-wise, for our area are tetanus (obviously) and West Nile. And she said that West Nile is "unbelievably uncommon" around here. She did instruct me to call the practice ASAP if Lacey ever gets a blood-drawing cut off something dirty, or something I can't identify, so that we can get her a tetanus vaccine.

Basically we concluded that, at 28 years old and with a solid history of good vaccination practices, Lacey probably has quite a bit of "vaccine-power" in her system. If she were younger and had ERU, or if she were at a boarding barn/moving around a bunch, the vet said she would be less inclined to let Lacey go vaccine-free but that as it is, she should be a-ok.

So that's a relief!!