Tree rings.

For some time, scientists have been saying that we can tell the history of weather by inspecting tree rings. If I remember the relationships correctly, wet summers make the rings thicker and thin rings tell us there was a drought. If you look at really old trees, you can supposedly see cyclic patterns in weather.

Humans appear to be the same as trees. Our hair and nails are our rings.

I've got 4 distinct patterns of thickness on each nail. There's direct temporal correlation between every nail on my hands and toes. The growth patterns have changed, the coloring has changed, and there are ridges on all of them.

These aren't funny little stripes that go down the length of the nail. They're across the width of each nail. They represent a health timeline over the last 60 days and they're far from subtle. They can be seen from several feet away.

As far as hair, I haven't whipped out the microscope, but I know my hair color is changing. It used to be dark brown with a lot of grey. Now it's a medium brown with less grey. Having talked to a few former transplantees, this is not uncommon.

On the general health front, I'm still having lower GI troubles. The docs want to do a spelunking expedition on Friday but I want them to wait until Monday when Ed is in town. It seems they're being pressured for info by my regular oncologist. He wants to know if he should treat me further for GVHD or CMV. (The CMV counts are going down so we know the drugs are working.) Odd, but the GI docs also mentioned that my problem(s) could be the result of my MMF dose. Funny how I've never heard that from the oncology team before.

Oh, the team expects I'll need another transfusion before the spelunking expedition. My platelet count is going down.

Kidney function is good. Energy is good. I improve a little bit every day.