It's been awhile since I posted an update, this blog has
temporarily been relegated to the furthest back of back burners (it has always
been a low priority).
The good news is that I hit my target of 117kg about a month
ago, my reading on Wednesday, on a brand new set of scales put me at 114.9kg.
My next visit to the consultant is this coming Tuesday morning so it will be
interesting to see what the hospital scales say (I also have a session with my
GP in the afternoon). 115kg seems a bit too good to be true. Although I'm pretty
much sticking to my diet, I've started allowing myself a little more leeway such
as treating myself to chocolate a couple of times a week post-Easter fast. I've
also tended to drink less alcohol lately as I'm worried it could be aggravating
recent gout attacks, although I've been a moderate drinker for years so it's
probably negligible in terms of calories removed from my diet.
The bad news is that my general heath has been pretty
rubbish for about two months now. Over Easter I had bout of flu, and I'm not
talking about "man-flu", on Easter Sunday I crawled in to bed at
about 5pm with a full on fever. This is despite the annual flu jab late last
year. I never get flu, but this year it hit me like a locomotive. It took weeks
to fully get over it, even after the worst had passed I went through several
weeks of feeling run down, tired and lethargic. The mucus cough wouldn't shift,
I couldn't sleep properly, I experienced ear infections and temporary deafness.
The next problem has been a chronic attack of gout that has
lasted for over three weeks now, albeit with fluctuating levels of intensity.
First in my right foot and currently in my right foot. I haven't allowed it to
stop me, but it has been terrible for mobility, I've had to reduce my morning
walks partly to manage pain and partly because I was taking too long to get to
the office. I made a decision last week to temporarily suspend my water tablet (and
consequently the sodium bicarbonate it's intended to counteract), I'm fairly
certain this didn't cause the attack, but it's probably prolonging it as raised
uric acid levels are a common side effect. It hasn't helped that I've exhausted
the stash of colchicine I brought back from Turkey last summer, I'm not a big
advocate of 'self-medication' but I stick to the usage limits and it's very
handy when a Turkish pharmacy will sell you 50 tablets for £2 without a
prescription (an NHS prescription 12 tablets for £8.40, but getting a
convenient appointment is the difficult part).
I can spot the signs that gout is impending but I've never
been able to work out the trigger, if indeed there is any one specific trigger.
This time I noticed that the initial flare up came after eating a meal
containing chorizo sausage, and there was a noticeable spike in pain the two
weeks later when I ate chorizo again. However, I've eaten chorizo many times
without getting gout, there are probably other commonalities I've missed, and
there have been other spikes in this current attack where chorizo is nowhere to
be seen. It’s all a bit mystifying, I’ll have plenty of things to talk about
with the docs next week.
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