Day 3: The worst gout of my life

Starting weight post loading: 309
Yesterday: 304.5
Day three: 300.5 (I'm peeing a lot. I suspect most of this loss is water.)

Day three started at around 6 am. My right ankle was starting to be a bit sore over the course of the previous day which I attributed to a misstep at some point. But awake and needing to use the bathroom, my ankle hurt so badly I thought I had sprained it.

The pain was like a white-hot shackle around my ankle. I could not put any weight on it. I crawled downstairs and crawled into the bathroom. Standing was excruciating. I guess I could have sat down, but I'm a man, dammit.

Crawled on my knees upstairs, woke up K and had her get me some pillows and ice. She also brought up Aleve and a supplement that contains Tumeric and Nettle. I took those and the ice helped okay, then I went back to sleep.

Later K went to the store and bought cherry extract, nettle capsules, and cherries, though cherries aren't necessarily on the diet. I stayed horizontal throughout the course of the day, staying home from work, and occasionally going to the bathroom despite pain while standing.

Over the course of the day the pain dissipated a bit, allowing me to make small steps.

I've had gout before - a few times since turning thirty. It usually presents itself as a circle of pain on the side of the ball of my foot, like the picture of gout on wikipedia.

Uric acid turns to painful crystals in lower extremeties. Gout in gout-prone individuals (hereditary), or due to diet (mushrooms, clams, oysters, mussels, red meat and alcohol - sorry, lovers of mushroom burgers, fried clams and beer). Cherries and nettles are supposed to re-absorb the uric acid and crystals into your bloodstreams.

Gout-prone individuals are prone to a massive gout attack in the first few days of the diet. K says that our dr should have considered that when I mentioned my gout to the dr. There's a medicine that can be prescribed to help avoid it, though it has side effects.

Now it's the evening and I've taken some more pain pills, and can almost imagine walking upstairs to bed.

Food notes: Lunch was yesterday's leftover lean steak and cherries. Dinner tonight was lovely wild-caught halibut with a little key lime juice we brought back from Florida :) It is sometimes hard to remember to eat - almost have to force myself to eat. No hunger pangs or alcohol cravings at all.

Cherries are not allowed on the diet. So I've cheated on my third day. :( But I avoided other stuff - the Wasa cracker, the Zevia soda, so I don't feel too badly about it. I'm going to have another batch of cherries before I go to bed.