Wincing the night away…
When it comes to sheer unrelenting pain there’s not much that gives gout a run for its money. And that G-thang has been back in full, debilitating effect in the last couple of weeks. I was first diagnosed with gout about five years ago. I’m pretty sure I’d had a bit of a live one the previous evening, and awoke in the early hours with a vicious, nagging, needle-jagging pain in and around my freshly swollen left toe. Had I fractured a metatarsal (then the in-injury) playing five-a-side football a few days earlier? Maybe I’d tripped or slipped off the curb – something, anything – on the way home the previous night? I didn’t think so. No, I was sure I hadn’t. All the same, when I tried to get up to point percy at the porcelain I suddenly found I couldn’t walk like a mere mortal. Even the slightest pressure placed on that digit was agony. So after hopping to the necessarium and observing that my big toe now closely resembled Karl Malden’s gin-soaked nose, it was off to A&E for the expert diagnosis.
Now gout wasn’t a new term to me. Sometime in my misspent teens the band I was in – in our over-archingly ambitious fervour – made a hastily aborted stab at penning an OTT rock opera snappily titled (if memory serves me correctly) The Enigma Of The Brain-Stretched Contestants. Memory doesn’t exactly recall what its central tenets were but a key cast member was the resident chiropodist Gout Calluses (a thin joke stretched to breaking point). I also knew the old urban myth that gout was caused by a hearty penchant for port. Well yes, I do like port, but I could fairly confidently declare that I only ever had the odd post-pranial one at a dinner party or some festive celebration.
Port aside, gout’s origins do come from diet – in a similar way to diabetes. Essentially a form of arthritis, it results from an excess of uric acid (the waste product formed from the breakdown of food) in the blood, which forms into needle-like crystals that can enflame joints and cause severe pain and swelling. It also traditionally targets the aged, with a peak age of 75. I’m no sure how, then, I qualified for such an early bus pass and nor am I particularly grateful.
All the same I’d not had an attack for at least a couple of years – and even then the last one seemed fairly mild – yet this most recent affair was the big kahuna, the party-sized pain-packed mother lode. It started overnight (it always does) when a small red band began to form around and inflame my big left toe – a similar sensation to someone jabbing white-hot knitting needles into your foot. Lacking medication, I phoned the doctor’s to make an emergency appointment – and got one – albeit 24 hours later, during which time the swelling and pain had doubled. The hardest walk of my life was to that surgery. I’m usually rather nimble, and certainly quick, on my feet but this journey was like being reanimated into the wretched undead corpse of Michael Sams and limping through treacle – every step a clanging cymbal of agony, a ghastly affront to an already suppurating sore.
Previously, the medication – Dicloflex – had worked fairly instantly, certainly in reducing the swelling. Not this time. Two days on and it was only getting worse – I could literally feel it extending a vice-like grip across all of my left toes on the night of its apex. Sleep had already been a distant cousin the previous few nights, and at this stage I seriously doubted we’d ever meet again. So I took drastic action at three in the morning on Halloween – downing a double dose of Paracetamol Extra and settling down for a solo viewing of Wolf Creek, with the crooked logic that watching someone else suffer violently would at least absolve some of my own.
Fortunately, the drugs have, very slowly, kicked in. Most, though not all, of the swelling has dispersed, the throbbing pain and sensation of being a freshly-severed amputee has certainly gone, and I can get around at close to normal pace again. However, if I want to avoid another attack – and by Christ that’s imperative – certain lifestyle changes are also afoot. That means holding back on virtually all of my favourite foods and anything high in purines (meat, seafood, mushrooms, even baked beans and raisins goddamn it) for a carb-heavy diet that seems to boil down to just a few staples – cheese (hurrah for small mercies), bread, pasta, eggs, rice, cakes and ice cream.
It also means wishing a fond and misty-eyed farewell to that staff of sustenance, beer – a heavy trigger due to both yeast and the fermenting process. We’ve had an alarmingly close relationship over the years – and I’d hate to even try and divvy up the portion of my meagre earnings that have gone the way of the brewery – but the honeymoon is now finally over. And before I pour out a brew to lament its last bitter kiss on my perfect lips, I might just revive dc Basehead’s Ode To My Favourite Beer in solemn tribute.
