Gout

  • Thread starter Thread starter Phil Waters
  • Start date Start date
P

Phil Waters

Guest
I've been in agony for two days now. I can't even have my bedsheet touch my big toe or I yelp in pain so I have to hang my foot out of the bed to avoid the incredible pain.

I can't put a sock on, never mind a shoe.

Oh Lord....why me!
 
The rich food and wine thing is a fallacy. Gout is caused by an excesss of uric acid, which can be exacerbated by the wrong diet but not necessarily caused by it. Five year old children can have gout. There is a "magic" pill that GPs can subscribe that will take the pain away immediately and there is another which can keep it away forever, though that one needs to be taken daily.
 
I am on Allopurinol for life, I take one a day but it still comes back every 18 months or so.

The "magic" pill is surely an anti-inflammatory pill? I'll be cured by 3pm today-ish.
 
I do sympathize with you, Phil. My father got gout dreadfully in one foot at the age of 44, amid much giggling from friends and colleagues, since his drinking consisted of about two beers on the weekend. We also didn't eat rich food at all. This was 40-odd years ago, before such wonderful pills, and unfortunately with concurrent high blood pressure, it contributed towards his death two years later from kidney failure.

Now you feel a lot better, doncha?
 
At least you'll have some idea of the pain I'm in then.

It really is one of the worst pains ever. I have now got anti-inflammy-wammys to hopefully restore some peace in my life.

Still in total agony though at the moment. Your poor dad must have had it much worse than me, with nothing like the medication available now on the go back then.
 
He was a fit, strong ex-PARA who'd been imprisoned by the dastardly Hun following the disastrous drop at Arnhem, Phil, but this got the better of any stoicism he had - he'd be white as a sheet with pain when it flared up. You're right, I think he was prescribed aspirin, and keeping the foot 'elevated'! :(
 
No, not at all, Maurice - my Dad would've laughed at it! :D That's exactly, of course, what happened, as you say, it's the build-up of uric acid crystals which causes the awful inflammation and pain. It was hard to see someone who I'd taught to ride, who enjoyed hacking out, motorbike and sidecar riding with his mates, endlessly tinkering in the innards of his cars, brought so low by something that is so unobvious.

The autopsy revealed 'scarring' of his kidneys, and then his Mother recalled that when he was 12, he was virtually in and out of consciousness with a very high fever for nearly two weeks. He also got malaria in Zambia, and was in a drenching sweat for four days before recuperating. I imagine it's possible for these severe illnesses to have affected the kidneys in some way?

It was just too bad that kidney transplants were in their infancy in 1963, as my Mother offered one of hers to save him. But, as the docs said, they needed one of his to be okay to take one of hers, in case hers was rejected. That wasn't the case, and he died six weeks after being diagnosed. The care was as good as possible (in Plymouth's Greenbank Hospital), to be honest.

You know, Maurice, if I put my Dad's life in the balance, though he went far too early and before we totally mended some of our rifts, I know that he enjoyed everything he had done so much. He adored my Mother and was a terrific Dad to me (though I didn't always think so at the time - but I was 18, in mitigation, and a complete know-all!), and Mum and I agree that any decrepitude in real old age would've depressed him.
 
Back
Top