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Hello Everyone,
I am 37 (male) and have been dealing with gout issues for the last 10 years. When I graduated from college and started working I was having issues with high blood pressure so the doctor prescribed some dieuretic to take water of me. One month later, boom, could not move my left toe. Felt like a bulldozer ran it over. Back to the doctor and was told that one side effect of the blood pressure meds was gout.
So 2 or maybe 3 times a year I would battle a gout flare up and was never tested for UA levels. Never took BP meds again after that day 10 years ago but it triggered something in my body. Side note, have not had blood pressure issues for many years now. Must have been stress of being out of school and supporting a family!
Fast forward to this year 2009. Started having problems in my right ankle. Wrote it off to old football injuries. Finally could not get out of bed one morning so off to the doctor and a referral to the orthopedic surgeon. X rays and MRI showed torn ligaments and other stuff. Bottom line had to have reconstruction on my both ankles after all was said and done. The surgeon is the one who found all the calcification in my right ankle and had a sample of the tissue analyzed for gout. Bingo! He informed me that my high UA over the years led to the calicification and is what causes my gout. My first test was over 10! All those years of beer drinking probably were not good. I have since been taking Allopurinol 100mg a day for a month and it went down to 8.6. Now I am taking 200mg a day and retest in 3 weeks. Been going through a lot of pain but, from reading all the posts understand that it is normal while the UA is normalizing. Really glad the forums exist. I was super frustrated and not to mention a little scared about all the things I had been reading about on the net in regards to gout and high UA. Will let you know what my next test comes up with. Oh, also having to see a dietician this week. That should be interesting.
It's a shame that you needed to surgery to confirm the cause of your pain. Many of these old injuries do NOT need surgery and heal by themselves to a decent enough extent. I have always felt if you have sore feet and go to chiropractor you wilolo get a spinall mnipulation…if you see a homepath you'll get a liquid to take with an eyedropper and if you see a surgwon you;ll get an operation. By picking our professional we determine exactly how we are treated. Good thing you didn't see a cardiologist.
Allopurinol would have been a LOT easier than operating on both your legs and maybe just as effective.
But that's water under the bridge and you got your gout diagnosis.
I see no need to continue fiddling with low dosages of allopriurinol. The tried and true average is 300 mg./day and I think you should be on it ASAP. Look into gettting some colchicine to manage the pain while you lower your uric acid.
How did the surgeries go? Are you up and about?
p.s. A diuretic, 10 years of hydrochlorothiazide, caused my gout too. If I ever read that some doctor was strangled with his own stethescople by a furious patient I'll giggle for DAYS!
Hey thanks for the response. Surgeries went well. The damage to my ankle was due to instability from the ligaments being torn and not healing properly so,there was no way around avoiding going under the knife. I just got my cast off my left ankle last week and moving around is slow. Sore ankles combined with the double whammy of gout attacks in my toe and an ache in my knee. Hopefully a few more weeks and I will stabalize.
It is unfortunate that uric acid deposits weaken ligaments and may well have contributed to the damage. I hope it heals well.
As zip2play says you need to increase the allopurinol dose as soon as you can. The last thing you want is more crystals forming around the surgery site. Aim for uric acid level below 6mg/dL, and if you can hold it around 3 for a few months you should see significant improvement.
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