Andrew and I had to take our iguana Darwin to the vet yesterday. Andrew noticed that there was some blood in and around her cage while he was getting dressed for work. He called me into the room and had me take a look. I discovered that what she had injured was her already bad toe. She had broken it a long time ago before she came to live with Andrew and I. There's not much that can be done for an iguana with a broken toe other than to let it heal naturally. That was what was done in Darwin's case and it didn't heal straight. You can see what I mean by looking at the picture below. It's the fourth digit from the left.
It also appears to be missing a claw. I was very worried when I saw this yesterday. It just looked like a bloody stump then. I immediately phoned her vet's office. I learned that he was not going to be in at all that day and I just couldn't see waiting until the following day to get her treated. For all I knew she could have been in some serious pain. I told them that I considered it an emergency and so they referred me to another veternarian that also specializes in exotic animals. I called that place and arranged to drop Darwin off and pick her up later on in the evening, provided she wouldn't need to stay overnight for any reason. Where we had to go was not far from my school and I had class starting at 10:30 a.m. I e-mailed my professor just in case I would be late. Darwin rode with us in the cat carrier.
When we got to the vet's we had fill out some paper work. I tried to explain as best as I could what had been going on with her over the last few months. She has been a different iguana all summer long. I would definitely call her behavior territorial. At first, we thought she was bobbing her head, hissing and generally being agressive because of the new cage we moved her into. It is enormous. She really needed more living space because she getting to be such a big lizard. Also, it was not an aquarium like what she had lived in all of her life up until that point. This new cage was made from metal coated in enamel. Andrew and I decided to wait and see if she would adjust to her new home. After a month, her behavior escalated and we decided that something else must have been wrong. Her appetite had started to wain around this time. I couldn't get her to eat for days at a time. I tried force feeding her, but that was extremely unpleasant for the both of us. I began to set out food every other day. Sometimes I would see that she had eaten some and most others not. She wasn't losing anything off her middle. Like a leaf in fall, she turned a bright orange. She began to dig at the bottom of her cage. All of this indicated to me that she was most likely gravid. We do not know for sure how old she is and neither of us is an expert, so we couldn't be 100% positive that this was the case.
Andrew and I constructed a box for her to lay her eggs in from two kitty litter pans, soil, sand, water, and duct tape. We moved it into the bottom of her cage and waited for her have them. She did go in there every so often to dig around. After another month we decided to take the box out and see if there were any eggs inside. We didn't find any. We decided against putting it back in because by that point she was consuming more food and putting some of her old weight back on. We figured there were probably eggs in the box and we just didn't find them. Her attitude had not changed any. In fact, it seemed to be growing worse. She started biting. She only managed to bite me just once. Andrew doesn't get in position close enough to her to get bitten. She got me on the side of my right index finger. It was a pretty deep bite. It bled quite a bit, but it didn't merit any stitches. I'm sure that I will end up with a permanent scar even thought I treated it with Neosporin. I figured at the time that I deserved it. Afterall, I stuck my hand in her cage when she didn't want it there. I started to have less contact with her from that point on. She still got her baths twice a week and meals every other day (she still wasn't back up to what she used to eat before all of this mess began), but seldom would I reach in to take her out for no reason other than just to be close to her. A few days before yesterday's incident with her toe, I noticed some swelling in her dewlap (the fleshy thing that hangs down beneath her jaw) and she didn't seem capable of extending it out fully (they do that in a display of agression usually in combination with head bobbing). I figured I would keep my eye on it and call the vet if the swelling didn't recede in a couple of days. While we were at the vet's yesterday filling out the paper work, I made mention of it and expressed my desire for the vet to check it out. I also explained that there was some abrasion located on top of her head. It is a common self-inflicted injury brought on by stress. I am more concerned with what caused her to do it than I am with the actual injury itself. It is my unqualified opinion that there is one reason for all of these problems with Darwin. I believe it all adds up to her still carrying eggs.
Andrew dropped me off at school an hour before class was scheduled. The vet called Andrew and Andrew called me sometime in the middle of my first class. I had deliberately left my phone on in case there was any news. I was away from my desk because the professor had us broken up to groups. I ran over to retrieve my phone from my bag and exclaimed, "I'm sorry, it's the vet!" As I scrambled to make it of the room I overheard Dr. Eisner explaining what happened with my iguana (he was in the know because of the e-mail he had recieved, the one I had sent just in case I would be late to his class). Andrew told me that the vet wanted permission to do some bloodwork and to take an x-ray. He explained that the bloodwork would tell the vet if Darwin was healthy enough to undergo surgery if it came down to that (possibly an amputation and a spay, but I'll get to that in just a second). It also would tell him whether or not she has an infection, which he thinks she might have one in her toe, which would be a reason for the swelling in her dewlap. The x-ray would tell the vet if our suspicions were correct: that she was mature sexually. He would also be able to see if there was any bone damage to her injured toe. I told Andrew to go ahead and have the vet do whatever he needed to and I returned to class feeling like I might cry.
Andrew called me in my off period and informed me of what the vet told him. From the x-ray he clearly saw eggs. Her toe showed no bone damage whatsoever, and he did not mention the word "amputation" again. He did recommend that we have her spayed. Let me take a minute to explain something: an iguana is a lot like a chicken in that regardless of having mated or not, a female will produce eggs once a year that she cannot reabsorb into her body. She will lay them, but only if certain conditions are met. That is easier said than done. Andrew and I tried that and it didn't work. You can have a vet take the eggs out each and every year, but that is expensive and you still have a hormonal lizard that wants to take off your finger. Spaying eliminates the need for a repetitive surgical procedure. It also has a good chance of returning the lizard's personality back to normal. We've decided to have the vet spay Darwin. We are waiting for the results back on the bloodwork and we'll schedule the surgery with him once we know she is healthy enough to survive it. For now and continuing over the next month or so, she will being given an oral and a topical antibiotic (for her toe) and extra calcium (for the developing eggs). She was never given anything for pain and I was assured that had the vet thought she was experiencing any, he'd have administered some medicine.
We took her back home later in the evening as planned. Andrew picked me up from school and from there we went directly over to the vet's office. We paid the bill and the vet tech took Darwin out of the back and brought her into a front examining room to show us how to medicate her. I'm not sure if Darwin was running to me or just away from them, but I picked her up when she came over and attempted to calm her down with a surprising degree of success. I placed her back down on the table, we finished up with the lesson, looked over the x-rays, and discussed the vet's notes from his examination. We also got a quote on the spay. It will run $450. Ouch.
Darwin is in good shape today. She has had a bath, she's been medicated, and I brought her outdoors for a while to bask in sun. We're going back out here in a few minutes. I came down to put on some sunblock and grab my lit book. I decided that if I was going to study I needed to first drink some tea (it's room temperature now). I decided I needed something to do while I sipped it and so I typed up this entry.
-- CrystalShiloh @ 03:50 PM