September 16, 2000 12:01 AM EST

The not great part of Thursday was discovering Janis, my iguana, had an injury and then rushing him to the vet. They kept him overnight and he came back today (Friday) a lot lighter -- he was in surgery this morning for a partial tail amputation.

I was depressed and edgy all night yesterday and all day today. Especially this morning, because I know the clinic's surgery hours are from 10 AM - 2 PM, so I was jumping every time the phone rang worried it would be the clinic telling me they killed my iguana.

The last time anyone here had a pet surgery was Gala, in 1995, for a bladder stone. So it's been a looooong time. I trust our vet infinitely. We LOVE him. But it still gave me the heebie jeebies and I was letting my imagination run wild. The cost was the same as Gala's was -- $300. I noticed from the sheet, prices have gone up at the clinic. So I wonder what a bladder stone surgery is at these days? Surely, that's more complex than a tail thing?

I just don't do well when the animals have to see the vet for surgery type scenes. Clyde once got a scratch on her toe that infected and abcessed and I got hysterical over the possibility that even though the abcess was removed, because her little teeny toes were so delicate, she may lose them anyway. The vet told us to be prepared for all possibilities. Paul spent days trying to get me to just cope rationally while I spent my time obsessing. Clyde never lost her toe, which is a credit to our vet's skill and I ended up worrying so much for nothing in the end. (Another vet might have lopped off her toe and told me it was too littly and spindly to try to excise an abcess and set it in a cast. Our vet told us not to get too hopeful but he'd give it a shot and actually pulled it off. I love, love, love my vet!)

But if I get that riled up over a toe imagine me today over a tail. Yaaaah!

The vet told us it must have been a fluke happenstance because Janis is healthy and there were no indications of some open cut with an infection gone haywire. They did a blood panel and they didn't say anything about his Ca:P levels being poor or him having brittle bones or anything from that angle. He must have just bapped his tail in his cage in just the right way to make it go funky. The lump we were worried over wasn't anything but swollen muscles. But part of his tail had gone hard and looked discolored and bad, so rather than risk gangrene or some other icky thing creeping up his body, we all decided the best thing for Jan was to have the bad part removed. He's young, and he will grow part of a new one, although it won't ever be as gorgeous and long as his original tail. Sigh.

Damn, I didn't even measure him! Maybe it's better that way -- that I don't know exactly how much tail was lost? I'll only obsess over that too. I checked on him and he's out in his patio cage sleeping like he always sleeps -- with that one leg hiked up. His bandages are fine. We have baby pictures of him sleeping like that in his old cage. That makes me smile.

Paul had taken him in and when he brought him back this evening I ran to the door and grabbed Jan who was wrapped up in a towel, sat on the sofa and just about sobbed all over him. Janis? He was busy scoping the living room for edibles from my lap. That lizard has a one track mind.

We put him back in his house and he was perky and active, ate a lot, and doesn't seem to be bothered or upset. The only time he has a problem is when he tries to use his tail for a counterbalance when jumping about. On the one hand, I am RELIEVED he isn't sulking or going through some emotional thing as a result of the hectic vet trip and surgery, but on the other hand the last thing I need is for him to jump, miscalculate because his counterbalancing tail is no longer there and he doesn't quite have his bearings, and then smash himself somehow and get reinjured!

Janis (as in Joplin), despite the misnomer, is a boy. We also have his brother from the same clutch that Paul named Ziggy (as in Stardust). Although iguana clutches vary from 10-40+ eggs, we call Janis and Ziggy our "twin boys." They are almost identical, except Ziggy is the stronger of the two and has a slightly different face. You can tell they are related though from their markings. (That's Zigggy investigating my back.)

I look at Ziggy and I look at Janis with the now missing tail hunk, and it just makes me so sad. Paul keeps telling me to take it easy. That, in the long run, it's best for Jan to be healthy and it's not like Janis will care about his tail much once he grows some of it back. I agree totally, and we've got other iguanas that were rescues who aren't perfect either.

Stump came to us with a misaligned spine, a broken tail, and missing digits. Lucy came to us with a broken leg, missing digits and is pseudo-blind in one eye. So it's not like Jan can't have a perfectly fine life with us just because he injured his tail. There's nothing the matter with him. Heck, Clyde intentionally dropped her tail when she was a baby because she got spooked and our niece iguana deliberately dropped her tail when she got into a mating fight with a male iguana who wanted her and she didn't want him. Iguanas and other lizards sometimes resort to tail dropping as a means to distract a predator so they can get away while the threatening being is distracted by this flapping, wriggling tail on the floor. In the grad scheme of lizard things, a lost tail is not life or death here. His body is prepared to deal with something like that happening -- the blood vessels in his tail close off at the breakage point immediately to prevent blood loss. It's not like if I suddenly dropped my arm. Not only can I not do that at will, I'd bleed to death.

The logical, sensible part of me knows this stuff. I can place it in the proper perspective. I much rather Jan lose part of a yucky tail than get gangrene and get REALLY sick. The possessive, blubbering, emotional weenie in me, though, is still have a hard time coping with all this drama. It's just going to take me a few days to get over it. Paul knows it, I know it. Even Janis knows it, only he doesn't give a flying poop.

All he is going to want tomorrow is his food on time and a spot in the sun.

~Astrophe