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According to the pamphlets that my podiatrist gave me, gout is something that middle-aged people, especially men, eat in large quantities of red meat and mice. organs, molluscs and crustaceans, which consume too much beer, a combination of these. None of this applied to me except the age thing. My blood test confirmed the doctor's suspicions; Monosodium urate monohydrate crystals were collected at my ankle as unwanted parents
Cortisone allowed me to walk normally the next morning and in my mind the doctor had solved the problem. But over the next three years, I would suffer more and more fierce and unexpected attacks in both ankles, both big toes and both knees. The flares sometimes lasted several weeks, although they flooded my body with as much water as I could contain, bursting a daily crystalline allopurinol and following a prescribed and curious diet.
No more quail or pigeon? Good. But black beans, spinach, asparagus, raisins, chickpeas and hummus, all the heart-healthy foods I'd eaten for years, had to leave as well. The first injection of cortisone was also the last, not only because of my memory of this needle, but because cortisone, used in the long run, can cause problems, including cartilage damage near the injection, and I am a very active person or was when I had my first attack. There was nothing to do, finally, but shake hands with this unplanned and untimely new thing in my body, and then fight it with everything I had.
I read everything I could find about managing gout, being still, "being with pain", giving it a name, a shape and a color – and "centering". I also have my daily exercise. when my knees, feet, or ankles were swollen to three times their normal size, I used dumbbells to make buckles, flies, military presses, and other weighted exercises sitting on a bench, my cane on the floor next to me. I did not see the choice – I had a life to live, articles to write, money to earn, songs to sing, family to see and friends to hang out with. I did not make any public announcement on any social network. I just felt that I had to move smoothly and not let the drop destroy everything else in my life.
Sometimes centering has worked, however, and sometimes it is not. I am a musician / performer and sometimes I wore my red fedora and did little hat and cane dances to my live shows. At other times, alone in my car, I panicked and screamed and cried at my knee or foot or toe. I imagined a red light over there and a traffic jam for miles, horns blowing, crystals coming out of their cars, arguing with each other and bumping and kicking in the walls of my joints of frustration. I wanted to see the member engorged and throw him away, far away.
Going out in public required to become hypersensitive to crowds in the supermarket or on the street. People, lost in their phones or thoughts, all seemed to be heading straight for me. Sometimes I had to raise my voice or extend an arm, because I could not immediately deflect, twist, retreat, or dodge those who came out like "jack-in-the-boxes" from the stores or the doors of the subway. People who walk several dogs, skaters and cyclists zigzagging on sidewalks must all be avoided. But in time I would notice them from a distance and take a defensive action in advance, as if you were watching a helpless driver on the highway. I did not expect the whole world to give up simply because I had gout.
Illness has taught me a few things. Unintentionally slowing down at a snail's pace in public produced a new and different world before me, a world that for the first time included the eyes of all people like me, crutches, canes and wheelchairs , moving slowly through an hour and a half tsunami of humanity that did not notice or did not always care if others were sick or lame.
When my gout dropped a year ago, in what I hope to be for the last time, I did not accelerate right away. I was grateful to wake up every day, examine my body with my eyes closed and enjoy the exquisite awareness of being pain free. I may not have learned to "be" completely with gout during those times, it inflamed my joints, but I ended up appreciating the change of pace and attitude. that it was necessary. It's harder to play a guitar solo at a slower tempo than at a fast tempo, and there's a lot to find in the spaces between the notes.
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