Sometime in the mid-90’s I had problems with impacted wisdom teeth, kidney stones and gout, all within a few months of each other. I called it the “year of pain”. Of the three, the kidney stones were the worst, although the gout (which first showed up while I was working on a drilling rig off Angola) wasn’t exactly tea with the Queen either.
The doctor I visited prescribed Allopurinol, and said I should expect to be on it the rest of my life. In France, where I was living at the time, the subsidized price was only about five bucks for a month’s supply; when I moved back to the States, however, the same amount cost about forty bucks. With some trepidation, I dropped it about five years ago and and luckily haven’t had an episode since. I’m not sure what the reason is, but I’m fairly diligent about remaining hydrated and have limited my consumption of red meat and shellfish, as others have mentioned. I also drink considerably less red wine than I used to, and that may have had an influence as well.
Wow. Thanks for explaining it to me! Sounds truly terrible, and I’m sorry to hear you’re all suffering from this thing.
In a strange coincidence, last night I became the proud owner of a “gout rocker” footstool thingie. It belonged to my grandma and she was going to sell it at my rummage sale this weekend. Our former neighbor made it a long, long time ago. When I expressed interest in it, grandma gave it to me! She said she’d rather have it stay in the family than sell it to someone else.
My doctor said that the tophus might go away if I kept taking my allopurinol. But I’ at the maximum dose now, and the tophus shows no sign of shrinkage. I’m beginning to think his advice was kinda like telling a kid to be good, so Santa will bring gifts. Looks like the only option to get rid of the damned thing is surgery.
Tophi on the nose and ears! How can that be? They’re not even joints!
Oh, by th way – another analogy for you that guys will appreciate: “A stubbed toe is to gout as a kick in the thigh is to a kick in the balls.” This is definitely true, having suffered all of the above. And I know that a kick in the groin has been compared to childbirth, so maybe that answers the OP.
Haven’t read every word of every post, but will point out that the answer to the question “has anyone had BOTH gout AND “natural” childbirth?” is almost guaranteed to be “No”.
To experience childbirth, one must be female (XX).
To experience gouty arthritis (how’s that for a trivia q?), one must be male (XY).
Yes, ladies you CAN get gout - but not until your testosterone levels approach those of the male. This can, and (very rarely) does occur sometime after age 80.
I keep indomethacin in the nightstand - I use it about every 2-3 years. I don’t touch red wine, shellfish, or any of the other classic triggers - and very little red meat.
Nonetheless, it started at age 50, and has visited regularly (now 62).
A number of years ago now, I was on a diet to lose weight and my husband was on a diet for his gout.
“Lots of veggies!” I thought. Mushrooms are veggies and can be used to pad out meat dishes nicely. We had some sort of mushroom probably in two meals a day for about a month.
At the end of which, my poor husband got the very worst attack of gout he has ever had. He was in such pain… He was on crutches for a couple of weeks, and I just felt dreadful when we found out about the mushrooms.
Just asked him and he said that gout hurts a lot more than his knee surgery did.
The first time I really noticed a gout attack (in retrospect I’ve had it since my early 20s, but the attacks were minor and went away quickly) I thought I had somehow broken my foot without knowing.
Nope. Although women get gout less frequently than men, it is not unheard of. I was diagnosed with gout at age 41 and I am definitely of the XX persuasion.
Me too. Though it was ‘just’ my big toe. Woke me up in the middle of the night and I ended up going to the doctor and taking the day off work. Me. Going to the doctor is pretty rare.
I’m a 50 year old man that’s done a LOT of construction, has had 130 stitches in his head and has lost 3 thumb nails due to hammer blows. That wasn’t too bad.
I’d say the worst pain I’ve had is severe, and I mean very severe ankle sprains. When your foot fills up with blood because everything is all torn up and you have to crawl to get home, it’s pretty bad.
Next would be gout. In my big toe is all. Imagine ground glass between your joints. I can’t imagine it in your whole ankle. I couldn’t even let a sheet on the bed cover my foot. Not that that helped much.
Never experienced childbirth, but I’ve had gout. Damn, it hurts to even look at your foot, let alone breath on it, when you have an attack. My sympathy to the OP.
Really? I’ve had gout and a kidney stone. On a pain scale:
Gout - 8 out of ten, unless your two-year-old son steps on it. Then a 10.
Kidney stone: 923 out of ten. You can’t walk. You can’t even stand. Even breathing is problematic.
I’m really glad indomethacin works for me without any bad side effects.
Wow. I once gave myself a gout attack by standing in cool water for a couple of hours while fishing–a double-footer at that. If it works for you, great, but I ain’t tryin’ it.
No gout here (fortunately!) but I’ve had 2 kids, with non-functioning epidurals. Oddly, the C-section was less painful than the induced vaginal birth, and easier to recover from.
The vaginal was… pretty damn unpleasant.
I’ve had painful medical tests involving cattle prods being touched to electrodes (look up “nerve conductance” and “electromyelogram” and “evoked potential”… the last said to be “uncomfortable” ). Those ranked up there with childbirth, quite frankly. They just didn’t last as long… I think… when you’re getting ZAPPED, time sorta slows down.
Nor was my gallbladder attack as bad as childbirth.
However - I’ve heard that kidney stones are far worse. Judging by other posters saying that gout is worse than kidney stones, I’d have to say gout is probably worse than childbirth.
Possibly the reason I think of it as less is that it passed relatively quickly after I felt it. Within a few hours, for sure. And while I did have points during the kidney stone attack that I was unable to stand, that wasn’t the entire time.
The gout lasted for weeks until I finally found a podiatrist who knew what to do to fix it. And some nights it kept me awake in pain.
Everyone is different. I had naproxen for another condition, and it did nothing for me.
One indomethacin, early enough (so the gout hasn’t had time to get “set in”), and the pain is totally, completely gone in an hour.
cmkeller: My kidney stone attack lasted three days, in the hospital, on morphine, over Memorial Day weekend. They were pumping fluids through me to try to get it to pass.
It didn’t pass. They had to go get it.
By the way…it was a uric acid stone, so maybe you could think of it as a gout attack/kidney stone double play.