Meet Joe's hairy tongue

Meet Joe's hairy tongue, the latest in an undeserved slew of unfortunate complications and ailments related to PSC and the transplant. Hairy tongue, says the omniscient physician known as Google, is "a commonly observed condition of defective desquamation of the filiform papillae." In plain English, says Joe (who is a real-live doctor, mind you): Hairy tongue is, well, when your tongue gets hairy. It's caused in some people by poor hygiene, and in others by a prolonged soft-food diet that causes your tongue not to get naturally scraped by rougher foods. In Joe's case, the culprits are the immune suppressants, the lack of a regular diet, the bazillion drugs he takes, and so on and so on and who knows. Like collapsed bile ducts, it's treatable, God love it. And I gotta hand it to Joe, he's laughing about it. For that matter, so was I, once I saw this picture of an actual inflicted tongue cell, magnified 150,000X under the finest scientific equipment. It's so ironic that it looks just like Gene Simmons.

(P.S. If you do yourself NO other favors today, do this for yourself: AVOID searching for the phrase "hairy tongue" on Google images. You will thank me.)