--as I am followed by the Cornell Weill Center for Peripheral Neuropathy in NYC.

My first skin biopsy was 7/24/2003--about three months and change into my acute onset, body wide, burning sensations. Samples were taken from just above left ankle and upper left thigh. Results showed significant intraepidermal nerve fiber density reduction in both spots, down to about two percent or "normal" density as determined by the original McArthur protocols at Johns Hopkins (the place the norms were established some years back). There was also significant swelling and overbranching of the fibers that were there, consistent with small fiber damage.

The analyses were done at the Columbia Presbyterian pathology labs (Cornell is affiliated with that system).

Since then, I've had two more biopsies done, one in late 2006 and one in early 2009. Same locations for comparison. Second one showed I was up to approximately eleven percent of "normal" intraepidermal nerve fiber density. Much less swelling. The third showed I had reached the eighteenth percentile, and nerves looked fundamentally normal. So I had gotten significant regeneration over the years, though there's no telling what the density numbers were like BEFORE the initial attack--results are consistent with a monophasic molecular mimicry autoimmune reaction, though. (As a point of reference, there's significant variation in individual nerve fiber density--McArthur defined "abnormal" as above the ninety-fifth or below the fifth percentile of the original control subjects tested, but that may be too narrow a definition--I can certainly see situations in which someone who may have been at the seventy-fifth percentile in youth comes down to twenty-fifth, for example, after developing neuropathy, but such a person would not meet the criteria for abnormal density. It's why they are supposed to look at and report the condition of the fibers as well.)