Flowergirl,

The reason I didn't get immediate help with colchicine is that I had taken INDOCIN (indomethacin) in the past which helped a lot and my "foot attacks" (not yet thought to be gout) never went longer than 3 days.

I had a jackass of an MD who never looked beyond numbers and the old uric acid range on the blood test printouts was HUGE...thus he kept telling me that readings of 7.0 for uric acid were normal. (Yes, I've suffered my share of fools.) So I listened to this "expletive deleted" and doubted my own diagnosis...which was GOUT. Of course the PODAGRA attack put an end to any guesswork.

chickpeas,
Get yourself an Rx for a bottle of colchicine, like 100 pills,...there's only one dosage, .6 mg. You take 2 at the start of an acute attack and then one evey hour til the pain stops to a max of 16. Sometimes the two pills is all that is needed if you catch it at the first sign of attack.

Colchicine does NOTHING for the underlying gout but it causes the joint to become alkaline and prevents further attack by white blood cells...ends the attack.

The usual "cure" is to take daily allopurinol for life...it prevents the body from making so much uric acid. You get periodic blood tests to make sure thaty your blood uric acid ia always below 4 or 5 which is below the saturation point so no more crystals will form.

I have found also that colchicine can help with my occasional backache as well. But one must be careful becasue intestines HATE colchicine and two pills is a mild laxative. THe recommended MAXIMUM of 16 pills in 16 hours is a crucucifixion of diarrhea...unbelievable actually.

Youre right flowergirl, something I learned during my last AWFUL attack of Gouty Arthritis, is there seems to be a large amount of conflicting information. Worse, Gout still seems to be thought by most people (even by some in the medical community) as a condition caused by the old stereotypes: Overweight Alchoholics who eat crap all day. What a joke! I dont fit that mold, and Im finding alot of people who dont, so why that still persists is beyond me.

Before my last attack, I had a couple Gout attacks that were bad but only lasted a few days and, looking back, were NOTHING compared to what my last attack did to me. I was, as Lenin said, literally CRAWLING across the floor so my foot didnt touch anything, and couldnt do anything to get rid of it. The Indocin & Colchicine didnt get rid of it, and not only did it last for weeks---after about the third week it moved over into the OTHER foot and stayed another almost 2 weeks. During this time, my heart would go into sudden episodes where it raced like I was going to pass out, and I now think of Gout as something more than a painful condition that lasts a few days...its something that I think can take you out, in more ways than one.

Considering all of that, I was shocked to find such a vast amount of conflicting information, and a lack of definitive answers for things we can do in the future. I started itching when I tried to take the Allopurinol, and I also have NEVER shown a high uric acid level in even ONE bloodtest, so I am really in a quandry over this. I also have a white "lump" under my wrist now that doesnt go away, and I think it could be the tophi that I had on my feet during my bad attack. There were several of them, but just the one remains. Even this, though, seems to be lacking in definitive answers. Even the diet when you go digging, is conflicted about many foods. There were also many sites that said alot of the people who are diagnosed with Carpal Tunnel are actually suffering from Gouty Arthritis, but since it is still so hard to lock down, it is under-reported.

I recently asked a doctor about the lump on my wrist, who looked clueless and just shrugged his shoulders. That shrugging of his shoulders, is what the entire catalog of information about Gout seems to be like---sort of a "Well....we kinda know some things about it, but...." I would think that Gouty Arthritis should be as important and well researched as the other forms of Arthritis, since it is a documented killer (especially before Allopurinol entered the scene).