Sorry about the diagnosis.  It's scary and once you hear it, it seems like everything speeds up leading to the surgery.  Cancer sucks, but you have definitely come to the right community for support!  This place has helped us so much in the 2.5 months since our golden became a tripawd due to cancer.  You will be surprised at how quickly Joey will adapt to being a tripawd. 

Our main floor is mostly laminate flooring or ceramic tile, but for the first month and a half until Chili learned how to "walk" as a tripawd, we had his main routes covered with a foam pad that we had for when our kids were learning to sit up and how to walk themselves.  Now that he knows how to walk, we have since replaced the foam pad with runners, because Chili started to avoid the pad for some reason.  We don't have the entire main floor covered in carpet or runners, just his path to the door and to the upstairs.  We also have shaved his paw fur to help him with traction and have kept his nails trimmed more than they used to be.  Since it's summer, Chili prefers to lay on the cold floor, but he stays close to the rug in case he needs help getting up, which is only once in a while.  He rarely ever slips on the wood, and it's usually when he's trying to chase his Boxer brother or wrestle with him and forgets to go slow.

At first we thought our regular vet might do the surgery, and she ballparked the front-leg amputation for our pomeranian at $900-$1200. We'd already had a series of x-rays (including anesthesia) and blood work for about $500, so I imagine that would factor in as well. Painkillers (Metacam and Tegretol) were about $40 for the little guy on top of that.

We're having the surgery done by a specialist instead, and we'll have our estimate on Friday, I imagine it would be a little higher than that, especially if they need to re-do x-rays or blood tests or anything. 

We're in Arizona, so it might be a bit more expensive over in your neck of the woods.