Gout Attack II – Electric Boogaloo

What really sucks about gout attacks is the “no-warning” aspect of it. I had all kinds of plans for today: get up early, work out, fast all day and continue on my way to a healthy weight.

The throbbing pain in my left-hand food (just below my big toe) put a friggin’ screeching halt to all of that.

So now I’m back to the “colchicine diet,” as I call it. Not a good diet, to be sure. Plus, two attacks in two weeks has me worried, so I’m seeing my doctor on Friday. I probably won’t update until after that. Thanks for the comments and support!

Gout + Colchicine = Instant (Insane) Weight Loss!

I’ve lost 5 lbs. so far this week. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because of the Smart for Life diet. Well, I’d estimate about half of it was due to S4L, actually.

I have a condition called gout. A condition that, well, really sucks to have. You can’t walk because it is so painful. While it occurrs in different places with different people, I usually get it in the joint just below my big toe, or in my ankle. Every once in a while, I get soft-tissue gout, which basically affects the skin on the upper part of my foot. Yeah, not nice.

What’s worse, the main drug you take during a gout attack, called colchicine, does really, truly nasty things to your digestive system. I’ll just leave it there, because what you’re imagining now is probably pretty close to what it is like to go through.

I started taking colchicine last Monday, because I twisted my ankle the day before and could start feeling it come on (and yes, a trauma to a major lower body joint like the ankle can bring on an attack). So starting that night and all through the next two days, let’s just say that the drug was having its way with my stomach, colon, etc. My body became a processing machine, in that it processed everything I ate right out of it. Not in a pleasant way, either.

Since I stuck with S4L even though I was in the middle of an attack, there wasn’t a whole lot of food to process, which made my body even more unhappy. It’s a vicious circle. Plus, you tend to get hydrated while taking colchicine, and dehydration is one of the key factors that brings on a gout attack. So echo the “vicious circle” comment here. Lotsa water drank.

About the only good thing to come of a gout bout (poet and don’t know it) is that I lose larger amounts of weight than I do on S4L. I’m not advocating this, er, “method” of weight loss, though. It’s just really a bad experience to go through, from both the gout/pain standpoint and the “shock and awe” it causes to the digestive system. And at the same time, too — woo hoo!

I was at 266 this morning. I’ll probably be below 265 by weigh-in on Saturday. At least that means I’ll have lost 60 pounds, and I’ll be 70 away from my goal. Almost half-way. And yet, the past few days weren’t worth it.

At least I’m now off the colchicine as of today, and am getting back to normal digestive-system wise. As you might expect, this news makes my wife and our dogs happy, happy creatures.

(And before anyone says, “Yeah, but you could be dying of/suffering through cancer/heart disease/something else equally bad or worse,” all I can say is, I know. When pitted against some of the truly terrible diseases and conditions out there, gout ain’t bad. But it still is a negative thing to go through.)