xtcian

7/8/03 Brooklyn, NY Call off

7/8/03 Brooklyn, NY

Call off the festivities and lock up your anti-inflammatories, because I just had my first attack of the gout in nine years. Yes, I know gout is a disease for Medieval French kings, and it's usually and Old Guy affliction, and it's all very funny (like goiters, the grippe, the bends and shingles) - but if you're in the middle of a gout attack, it kind of sucks.

Just so you don't have to go googling or anything, gout is simply when your body produces too much uric acid and your kidneys can't get rid of all of it. It leads to two things: kidney stones (click here to get a first-person glance at one of those), and gouty arthritic attacks, which means that the uric acid crystallizes in one of your joints, leading to unbearable pain.

I last endured one of these babies in 1993 while we in Nag's Head eating crabs. I thought those days were pretty much over, and in fact, I stupidly stopped taking allopurinol, the miracle medicine that keeps all this from happening. Then, whilst walking around the Home Depot in Albany last night, I experienced a stabbing misery, like stepping into a shard of glass. The pain was like an old friend from simpler days, and I knew what to do immediately: stop walking and start popping Advil like they were Pez.

Unfortunately, today I had to get from New City, NY to Brooklyn without a car, and spent hours hobbling from one train to the next. This looks like a normal train platform:

...but try limping all the way to the end with a searing unpleasantness shooting up your body. Grand Central Station goes from Gorgeous to Unmanageable in seconds.

Fortunately, I can comfort myself that this is sometimes called the Disease of Kings. Also, 18th century philosopher David Hume used gouty toes to exemplify man's cruelty to man. If you're going to have a disease, make it one rife with metaphorical meaning, or why bother, right?