Ooya bastard!!!
Last Sunday while I was writing the last post I was getting a bit of a twinge in my right big toe. This got progressively worse to the point that if someone had offered to stove my head in with a hammer I would have taken them on. Fucking sore is an understatement. A couple of trips to the doctors and it turns out I have gout. I must be the only fucker alive that stops drinking and gets gout. I thought it was only port swilling retired sergeant-majors that got gout but it turns out all that is a bit of a myth. Here's a wee explanation to what gout is taken from
Patient.co.uk
Gout is caused by a chemical in the blood called uric acid (urate). Uric acid is usually harmless, and is made in the body. Most is passed out with the urine, and some from the gut with the faeces (stools). In people with gout the amount of uric acid in the blood builds up. From time to time the level may become too high and tiny grit-like crystals of uric acid may form. The crystals typically collect in a joint. The crystals irritate the tissues in the joint to cause inflammation, swelling, and pain - a gout attack.
And its fucking sore.
Here's some of the causes.
- Drinking too much alcohol can cause uric acid to build up.
- If you do not have enough vitamin C in your diet (more on this below).
- If you drink sugar-sweetened soft drinks high in fructose it can cause uric acid to build up. A recent research study found that having two drinks a day of a sugar-sweetened soft drink increased the risk of developing gout by 85%. (Drinks labelled as 'diet' or drinks containing artificial sweeteners were not found to increase the risk.) Fructose-rich fruits and fruit juices may also increase the risk.
- Certain foods may 'tip the balance' to raise your uric acid higher than normal. In particular, eating a lot of heart, herring, sardines, yeast extracts, or mussels may increase the level of uric acid. However, eating a normal balanced diet should not have much effect on the uric acid level.
- Some medicines may raise the level of uric acid. For example, diuretics (water tablets) such as bendroflumethiazide, aspirin (at full painkiller dose - not low-dose aspirin used to prevent blood clots), and some chemotherapy medicines.
- More uric acid is made than usual in illnesses where the cells of the body have a rapid turnover. For example, severe psoriasis and some blood disorders.
- People with certain other conditions have an increased risk of developing gout. These include: obesity, high blood pressure, kidney damage, diabetes mellitus, bone marrow disorders, lipid disorders (especially hypertriglyceridaemia), vascular disease, enzyme defects such as hypoxanthine guanine phosphoribosyltransferase (HGPRT) deficiency and glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency.
The only thing that would have applied to me would have been to much alcohol, but Octsober ruled that out. I asked the Doctor his opinion. He basically said that some unlucky cunts produce higher than normal levels of uric acid and get gout. I am one of those cunts. Nightmare.
Hopefully it'll be a one off and even if its not its quite easily managed with the correct medication.
So I've been stuck in the house for what feels like four fucking years (eight days.) We bought a new laptop recently and I got an old version of Sony Vegas to edit my Gopro videos so they should start looking a bit more arty farty. I had some old footage from the
bike trip I done with Faithir and I've knocked a couple of videos together, mind and click on the sprocket and turn it up to HD quality.
Hopefully this gout fucks off sharpish and I can get out on the pushbike again.
