On Gout

Gout is not a laughing matter.

I don’t think it’s easy for those lucky people who don’t suffer from this curse to imagine just how painful gout actually is. In fact, I don’t think they can imagine the pain. It’s indescribable, but I’ll try.

I’m currently in the throes of my first knee gout attack, and my goodness, it’s all the bad and curse words I can think of. I thought gout in toes was bad enough, but this? This is something else entirely.

It’s like someone is using a hammer on a chisel, chiselling into my knee.

Don’t get me wrong, there are other sufferers who have had it in both knees, and I just cannot imagine that. During this attack, I feel useless. So useless to the point that I don’t know what I can do anymore.

It’s like my kneecap is slowly, but severely, splitting into millions of pieces.

One small, tiniest of the tiniest brushes of material, such as a bedsheet or the softest fleece house trousers, can cause searing pain that causes you to shout out. Trying to sleep is a nightmare – if you can actually get to sleep. Even getting into bed is a trial, but it’s worse to try and get out.

I woke up around 5am the other night needing the bathroom. Often with gout, your temperature can fluctuate, and I was cold. It was at that point that my legs started to shiver, out of my control, making the pain even worse and the urge to pee much stronger. The shaking wouldn’t stop. And it got worse. My partner is now awake and not sure what to do, we’re both in panic. Somehow I get up, am presented with a bucket – toilet relief at least.

It’s like all of the possible pain around your body is solely concentrated on one place, magnified by 1,000 and using a machine gun to shoot daggers, needles and axes into your knee at the same time.

So this has been it for the last few days. It’s not fun, this isn’t written well but it’s how I’m feeling.