here's the latest on junior:

because she has some liver damage (this had been previously evident from blood tests, and was caused by her reproductive problems), she is taking longer to metabolize the medication than she normally would. on the bright side, though, medical studies done with green iguanas given daily doses of far much more of the drug than junior received suffered no long-term effects.

on the downside, however, she also has an infection that she now has to fight off (which may have been caused from the repeated injections of fluids into her body). they have lavaged (sort of rinsed out) her lower body cavity with an antibiotic fluid to get some of the bad stuff out, and today they were planning on looking into her with the tiny endoscopic camera again.

she is still staying at uga until she is 100% better. mom and i were able to go out and see her yesterday, and we thankfully got her to eat for the first time since she had surgery last thursday (they were starting to have to give her nutrients and fluids via a feeding tube). also, she is pooping and peeing like normal again, so this is a good sign. she was high as a kite on morphine, so i hope she remembers that we visited her... last night i was told that she finally drank a lot of water on her own, too. throughout all of this she has remained bright, alert, and quite active, at least.

it's been an up-and-down kind of ordeal, with bits of good and bad news sprinkled throughout. i feel guilty sometimes for having put her through this, but if she'd never had surgery, her liver would have probably been destroyed eventually, and her weakness of course would have continued.

i truly appreciate any positive thoughts that y'all can send her way.

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