How It Began
It was the Spring of 2009. I was 49 years old and teaching high school math at the time. One day I woke up with a severe pain in the top of my right foot. I went to the emergency room, concerned I may have a blood clot in my foot. The nurse took some blood. The doctor took a look and gave me the diagnosis: gout. It never occurred to me that this intense joint pain I was experiencing was gout. I had scarcely even heard of it. And so began my, now, thirteen-year battle with this terrible affliction.
My Gout Experience
So, after my first experience with gout, I have now had somewhere close to 40 gout attacks spanning over thirteen years. Unlike many I have read about or friends who have shared their experiences, my gout attacks have always been severe. Never a mild attack. Every attack I've had has usually lasted three weeks or longer to get back to where I could function normally again. Most of those three-week bouts forced me to spend my time flat on my back, on the couch. If you do the math, that's around 120 weeks of severe joint pain from gout. That's over two years of my life.
I'm not sharing this to gain your sympathy. There are millions of people across the world that suffer as I have, or worse. I'm simply letting you know I've been there...a lot, and I think I've figured out a few things about what triggers a gout outbreak and how I may have finally figured out how to prevent future attacks... at least for me.
What Joints Does Gout It Hit
Gout can hit almost any joint. Here are mine:
- Joints on the top of my feet
- Joints on the bottom of my feet
- On the left and right sides of each foot
- Both ankles
- Both heels
- Both knees (oh, they were really bad)
Oddly enough, I have never had gout in any of my toes. I have had it at the base of my toes but never actually in the toes themselves.
One of the more confounding elements of trying to recover from gout has been, just when I think it's starting to subside, it moves to another part of my foot and starts again. So frustrating!
Gout Remedies I Have Tried But Didn't Work (for me)
What remedies have I tried over the years to prevent gout attacks?
- The drug of choice for most doctors is Allopurinol. I tried it for three days and developed three fever blisters on the top of my upper lip. It appears I'm allergic to it. Oh well, I don't like taking drugs anyway.
- Apple cider vinegar
- Cherries
- Black Cherry juice
- Acupuncture - But in fairness, I only went twice and there is recent research that reflects positively on this type of therapy.
That's it for this post. In my next post I will share some of the dots I've connected over the years between joint trauma, inflammation and gout. Hopefully, it will trigger similar connections for you that help you prevent future attacks.
In the mean time, please consider PainAway. It is a natural, fast-acting joint pain reliever and anti-inflammatory. IT WORKS! Here's my PainAway story-I'm Ben R
