A Legless Lizard

About 2 weeks ago, Bug noticed that our little iguana "Anouk" had lost her tail... She had gotten it caught in her climbing vine and unfortunately she decided to drop the tail about 5 inches from the tip. Although we were sad about it, their tails do eventually grow back. We thought this was her only injury. We went on with our lives until a few days later when Jeff was misting her cage. He got a very concerned look and said in a very upset voice, "Oh, no..." When I saw the cause of his concern, my heart sank. Her back left foot had died. Three of the toes were completely black and dried out. Immediately we knew what had caused it. She loves to climb in her mesh cage, but unfortunately she climbs the top like monkey bars and in fact has declawed herself on one front finger. However, she falls all the time. The only thing is that she has never acted like she was hurt. We think she must have landed wrong and broken either the bones or a blood vessel. Either way, we knew what had to be done. Now just for the record, if Anouk was "just an animal" to us, we would have euthanized her immediately, however as strange as it is to some people, she is no different than any cat or dog is to anyone else. She is one of our babies and part of our family. She only cost us $25.00 at the pet store, but we easily spent over $200.00 on her comfort and well being. At first we were going to surrender her to an iguana rescue, but finding a good home would take a while and her foot needed to be taken care of now.
So I called a vet and we took her in. She was diagnosed with dry gangrene and her foot had to be amputated. When we dropped her off and I handed her to the vet's assistant, I almost cried. They told us that reptiles often stop breathing during sedation and because of her size they would be unable to insert a breathing tube. They said that most likely we would lose her, but we had to give her a chance so we agreed to the $200.00 surgery... Yep, that's right, $200.00 for a lizard to have a leg amputated. We left her overnight since the surgery would be in the morning, and let me just say that I really missed her while she was there yesterday. I waited for the call to tell us if our baby Anouk had made it or not. Finally the assistant called and the first thing she said was "Anouk is doing GREAT! She's already up and running around."
I could barely believe it, not only did our baby survive against all odds, but she was doing much better than anyone expected. We picked her up last night and even with half her leg missing, you can't tell that she's even hurt. And the best part is that the vet gave us a discount and it only cost $160.00 instead of the $200.00. I'm so happy that she's ok.