Julia Rennick

Writes for Calwyn

About

Freelance yoga instructor in Portland, Oregon. Barefoot in front of a class six days a week, which means anyone in the front row has an unobstructed view of my feet at almost every moment of a session. For years I carried this quiet assumption that teaching barefoot meant I was more in tune with my feet than most people. That assumption ended during a Thursday morning class two years ago, when Ogechi, a student who has been coming to that same class for years, paused near the end of a session and asked, with calm directness, what was happening to my big toenail.

I hadn't been ignoring it exactly. A yellowish discoloration along the outer edge, present for months. I'd been telling myself it was old pressure damage, even though I hadn't worn constricting shoes in some time. Ogechi's question made it harder to keep telling myself that.

Three months of tea tree oil from a health food store in the neighborhood produced no visible change. Same nail, same color, same edge. That was the point where I stopped looking for quick answers and started reading more carefully into how nail growth actually works, what happens at the nail bed when dermatophytes take hold, and which supplement ingredients have actual evidence behind them versus which ones just have a pleasant smell and a vague label claim. The reading became a tracking log. The log became this site.

The tracking routine now happens in the bathroom of my rented Craftsman bungalow in Portland's Sellwood neighborhood. Biweekly photographs against white tile. A phone note updated through the week. I've been keeping that up for two years. The early photos are useful mainly as a reminder of how easy it is to read improvement into a picture when you want to see it. A longer baseline is what makes the later comparisons worth anything.

Willa, my next-door neighbor and an occupational therapist, has a useful habit of asking for evidence before she accepts any conclusion I've reached about a product. That skepticism has saved me from overstating a result more than once. What I bring to this site is two years of careful documentation on a problem that Ogechi could see from across the room before I was ready to take it seriously. For an actual clinical picture, a podiatrist or dermatologist is who you want.

Articles by Julia Rennick

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