Gout Attack

One of the measures that determines if a person qualifies for bariatric surgery is their comorbidities. These are chronic conditions that exist in the patient along with the obesity. The most common are diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. These are all also considered lifestyle diseases, as in they can all be treated with a change in lifestyle (most but not all). 

Now considering how large I was when I started in January 460lbs, my obesity alone is enough to justify the surgery. In addition to my extremely high BMI I also have a couple of these cormorbidities. Now surprisingly enough I wasn't diabetic, despite it running in the family, better still I wasn't even pre-diabetic.

My two CMs are high blood pressure and gout. Now the BP has been managed with medication and hasn't been an issue, the gout eventually was as well after I had a flare up in April.

If you've never had gout, consider yourself very lucky. Seriously. I can't emphasize enough how much gout sucks. I actually had a flare up this week and it was fucking awful.

How a gout flare up works for me:

Day 1:

Light ache begins in my foot (because that's where my gout attacks happen).  The gout has arrived and it has a message for me:

Shocked at Gout's sudden arrival I try to break it to it gently that I don't think we're good for each other.

I go to sleep with a dull ache in my foot that night and hope that Gout got the message

Day 2+:

Gout did not get the message. She has insisted on staying and throwing a rage fit in my foot. Clearly she doesn't handle rejection well.

I can no longer flex my foot without being in excruciating pain, my foot is swollen as though I have a shellfish allergy and have convinced myself that if I remove it from the shell it's all going to be OK. Forget walking, I'd rather be actively mauled by a Honey Badger than deal with the party that Gout is throwing right now.

Sometime in this I manage to get my hands on some pain medication. It used to be a heroic dose of Ibuprofen and some Norco/Percocet. That would help usually. However now that I've had my surgery I'm no longer allowed to take muscle relaxers, so Ibuprofen is out. However my lovely doctor did prescribe me something to combat the gout and a trip to the ER resulted in some Percocet. The combination of the two seems to have helped.

I am currently on day five and Gout has left for the most part. There is some residual pain and I'm still limping guy. Though it's ok, I can deal with cleaning up that broad's mess. Hopefully it'll be a long time before she tries to be friends again.

D