Saturday, December 27, 2008

Almost went Toby on myself

So the end of the year brought with it the usual stress and irritation. This year there was a twist. Life decided that I'm just not going through enough. I apparently don't have enough things to be concerned about or to get stressed over. Life, it seems, does not take the holidays off.

A few days a go I woke up in the morning in pain. My foot was killing me. What the hell? It was fine when I went to bed. Had I been sleepwalking and bashed it on something? No time to dwell on it, I had to go to work and it wasn't too terrible a pain. It hurt all that day and night and hurt still when I woke up the next day.

Odd.

The day after that, Christmas day (spit) it got worse. Much worse. It started out about the same but during dinner it started to get worse. After dinner it continued to turn up the pain dial until it reached the point that I can really only describe as unrelenting torment. I got home and took off my sock to find my foot swollen like an overstuffed sausage.

Great.

Yesterday I called my doctor and made an appointment. This meant having to squeeze my disturbingly tumescent foot into a shoe. Even prying it open as far as I could it took me a long time to put it on. The pain dial turned itself up another tic. I get there and have to take the shoe off (wince) for her to see.

Do you eat steak?

Yes.

Seafood?

Of course.

Gout.

...shit.

Why didn't anyone tell me it hurt like this? Someone I know had to have known. Bastards. Anyway I put the shoe back on (wince, quiet moan) and hobbled, yes I was full on hobbling at this point, to go for the X-ray she wanted just in case. Shoe back off (groan), X-Ray, shoe back on (snarl, quiver) and finally home. No red meat, no seafood and no beer until it goes away.

Oh joy.

Here I am today, foot still swollen, wondering if people will still ask me next year why I hate this time of year so much. Maybe I'll smash their feet with a sledge hammer and ask them if that improves their mood or makes it worse.

1 comment:

The Taco Prophet said...

Holy shit. /comfort

How long till it heals up?

On a side note, I totally have a gout story. A couple weeks ago, our vice president was in town from Canada. After a morning of totally great meetings where my team was yet again an afterthought, he took us to lunch at an Irish pub across the street.

At lunch, someone commented on him ordering a bit differently than usual. Shepherd's pie rather than his usual going out into the back to gnaw on raw steak.

He was eating healthier, he informed us (I guess there are vegetables in shepherd's pie, but it's not exactly what I'd think of as health food), because he's got gout.

So here's the thing. With his Canadian accent, I thought he was telling us he got a goat. And I was sitting there, while everyone's making sympathetic noises, wondering why the fuck he felt we needed to know he got a goat, how the fuck he got permission to have a goat in the suburbs, blah blah blah.

When I finally figured it out, I laughed, and then I looked like an asshole for laughing at him for having gout.