“I can relate.”

“I know how you feel.”

These are words that can either soothe or irritate, depending on your frame of mind and current situation. In a place of acceptance and healing, those words might be welcome. In a place of pain and frustration, you might be tempted to punch the person uttering the phrase, no matter how well-meaning he or she might be. Ever said these phrases to your horse? I can’t say that I have, but if I had a horse with uveitis, I just might be this week, as I’ve been sidelined with the condition.

Uveitis, simply, is inflammation of the cellular layer of the eye that contains blood vessels, the iris, ciliary body, and choroid. In my case it is anterior (at the front) uveitis, also known as iritis. It’s very painful because every time the pupil dilates and constricts, it feels as if someone’s sticking a knife in my eye. And since the bad eye mimicks the good eye (in tracking and pupil constriction/dilation), simply covering the bad eye with an eyepatch doesn’t solve anything.

This morning Dr. Brian Gilger (DVM, MS, Dipl. ACVO, an associate professor of ophthalmology at North Carolina State University and equine researcher) explained the horse/human similarity to me: “Horses and people have nearly identical uveitis, which is one reason the study of equine uveitis is important–i.e., anything we learn about the pathogenesis of equine uveitis is directly applicable to human uveitis. The treatment is a bit different, since the human eye can tolerate steroids much better than the equine eye