An attack of gout makes me think about the consequences of pain

Painkillers, old injuries, whatever happened to family doctors…

---

Gout was keeping me awake during the night, to the point where, at 5 o’clock, I finally caved in to pain and hobbled at sloth miles per hour to the kitchen for a glass of water, a colchicine tablet and two painkillers. On returning to bed I was instantly reminded of the sheer weight of the duvet pressing down on my foot and triggering a toxic mixture of pain and discomfort, enough to bring tears to my eyes and the knowing sense that sleep will be off the menu. To anyone who has not experienced it, and to whom gout might be considered with a certain degree of jocularity, it is not in the least amusing.

Consequently I was later than usual out of bed and my intention of taking a time-constrained returns package to the post office, despite the persistent rain, has been thwarted. And that makes me anxious as I do not want to lose the refund if the package is late.

As if to add insult to injury I can also feel that my left thigh muscle is not as it should be, and the existential fear that that instills in me would be a mystery to most people, but I have crystal memories of the time when, as a teenager, I experienced the greatest pain I ever felt in my life. Attached to the pain was the sheer embarrassment of not being able to move around, although I found, to paraphrase Foghorn Leghorn – one of my favourite cartoon characters – a strange and comical means of locomotion. Comical to an observer that is. To put it in crude terms it could loosely be described as the ‘ass shuffle’, as I was literally walking on, well, my ass!

Things weren’t so bad then. I lived with my parents, brother and two sisters, and General Practitioners – real family doctors – made house-calls in those days. Six weeks off school and pretty much confined to bed with an occasional day trip to the lavatorial facilities. Now I am living alone – thankfully in a bungalow – so the ass-shuffle would be of very little use. For example, how on earth would I reach the kettle to fill it with water let alone switch it on? Pain and discomfort is one thing – well, two things really – but the inability to make tea or warm a can of soup for dinner is what might kill me off. Is this the early stages of how some elderly people meet their doom? A more horrific way to die is difficult to imagine. Luckily I have a smartphone so can call for help.

Thankfully, my thigh muscle, whilst causing some discomfort, has not become twisted as it did all those years ago, and I sincerely hope that it doesn’t. I just have gout and – whilst that limits my mobility – I can still make coffee.

Newton Abbot, Devon, 11:06, 17ºC, grey sky, negligible to light breeze, moderate rain.