Hello, my name is Jamie and I have the gout. When I tell people this, they usually look at me with a mix of pity and disbelief, as if I had just told them that I have brain herpes or face cancer. My favorite thing to do in these cases is to reach out, touch the person on the arm, and say “And now you do, too.”
It’s not that bad, though. In fact, it’s something that comes and goes, and it can be many months –years, even– between flare ups. When it hits, though, it always hits me in the big toe of my left foot, making it agonizingly tender and a pain to walk on. No, I’m not going to die from it or sprout extra nipples or anything. It just makes it painful to walk or stand or exist in general.
Unfortunately this condition has decided to raise its inflamed head and attack over the last week. Worse, it decided to do this while I was spending 8+ hours on my feet at the E3 show. I was in so much pain the last day of the expo that I thought I was going to throw up, and ended up sitting down wherever I could find space –usually in the middle of a high traffic hallway. Last Sunday it got so bad that I finally gave up and hobbled down to the Urgent Care Facility and saw a doctor about it. The meeting went something like this:
DOCTOR: Hi, what seems to be the problem?
ME: I have the gout. Give me drugs.
DOCTOR: All right, then.
A few minutes later a nurse came in with a syringe. She was young, and unlike most nurses besides those portrayed in pr0n, she was very pretty.
CUTE NURSE: Hi, I’m going to give you a shot of dihydroximetocordinalocide to help with the pain and the swelling.
ME: Okay.
CUTE NURSE: We usually administer it in the upper left quadrent of the gluteal region.
ME: So you’re going to shoot me in the ass?
CUTE NURSE: Yes. Turn around and drop your pants.
I did as I was told, halfway expecting to hear a “waka-waka-wacho-woow” soundtrack queue up, but instead I got a needle full of dihydroximetocordinalocide jammed into my upper left gluteal quadrent. The good news is that it did indeed help with the pain and swelling. The bad news is that I think they were out of regular bandages and she put a Sesame Street Elmo band-aid on my butt.
I also scored a bottle of blue pills that I’ve been popping like breath mints. I don’t know what they are. When Geralyn asked what kind of drugs they gave me, I said “Blue.” Sometimes, I just don’t understand why she gets annoyed with me.
My father has gout, and suffers from regular, intense flareups.
My father is also a violent, wife-beating psychotic who, I shit you not, claims he’s a retired CIA agent that knows the real secret behind Area 51.
So tell us, Jamie — what really happened at Roswell? 😉
I’d tell you, but then you’d have the gout.