Gout

Who knew that such a small part of my body could cause so much intense pain.

On Saturday we took our family out to a corn maze (post coming soon)and a little way in my big toe started to hurt. I could still walk and we finished the corn maze and everything, but on the way home I had to take off my shoes because it was getting worse. That night it started throbbing and I could barely sleep. Sunday, Jeff took off for a week in Georgia on a business trip. I was tempted to skip church. Taking 3 kids to church while limping didn't sound like something I wanted to do, but I ended up going anyway. People didn't seem to notice too much that I was limping, but by the time I got home from church I could tell something was definitely wrong with my toe. It had swollen so fat that I couldn't wear shoes, it felt like I had broken it and re broken it throughout the day. I was pretty pathetic for the rest of the day. Thank goodness I have such great kids that took care of me, even brought me breakfast in bed the next morning.

Monday morning, its throbbing, red, swollen, hot and I could barely walk. I'm basically crying in pain and I consider myself to have a high tolerance for pain...it hurt that much! I went to the doctor, waited in the waiting room for over an hour. My doctor thinks it might be Gout, which I'm pretty young to have. They say the best way to diagnose is to draw blood from the joint and NO WAY am I allowing them to even touch my toe. So, they do a normal blood test to see if I have elevated uric acid in my blood. I guess Gout is where your body doesn't eliminate the uric acid which ends up forming crystals in your joints and it always starts in the big toe. After doing some research on Gout, I know I have it...however, my blood tests show that my uric acid levels aren't elevated. My doctor wants me to come back in for more tests, but I'm not sure I want too. I'm feeling pretty good now, especially after the anti-inflammatory and pain pills. I'd hate to go through this again, but since my blood test came back normal, I'm not sure I want to put myself through more testing if it was just a one time incident.

I come home from the doctor on Monday and the school calls the second I limp in the house to tell me London was vomiting and needs to be picked up. Then, at 4pm I got a phone call from my Aunt and Uncle telling me that they are passing through and need a place to stay. My house was a disaster! It definitely made for one terrible day...not my Aunt/Uncle visiting, I loved that part...just the last minute notice while I was needing to go get prescriptions filled and clean the house for them. And, this all seems to happen when Jeff is gone. I survived though!