Ich habe Gicht

Just over two years ago some very good friends (or on reflection maybe they weren't such good friends) bought me a voucher to U-Brew It, a company specialising in allowing the individual to brew their own beer.  So armed with a gift voucher and a very enthusiastic Richard Tweedie I made my way to the U Brew It brewery.  I could go on about how well set up the facility was, how impressive and numerous was the list of beers that could be brewed and how cheap it was in comparison to buying beer retail but I won't.  I will just say that the yob in me selected the beer with highest alcohol content and that we brewed over 96 bottles of the stuff.  On sampling our brew everyone agreed that it was indeed a very likeable beer and that two bottles of the stuff on a warm summers afternoon would have you passed out under the table before you could ask "How strong is that beer?"

With a half share of 96 bottles of "Old St Nicks" in the fridge I was conscious of the fact that the nectar was brewed without preservatives and that it did have a shelf life.  So of course I did my best to ensure that none of it would go to waste.  Some days later as I got ready for bed I noticed that my right big toe was a little sore, as if I had stubbed it.  The next morning it felt as if I had kicked a wall.  I limped to the bus and went to work.  By 10 that morning I had to remove my shoe because the pain was so great, by lunch time I couldn't put any weight on it at all.  It felt as if a car had driven over it.  I gave in and phoned Annika to ask if she could pick me up and take me to a doctor.  The doctor listened to my tale of woe, took one look at my foot and announced that I was displaying the classic symptoms of gout.  I vehemently disagreed with him because everyone knows that gout is for fat old men in dressing gowns with a fondness for brandy.  I think he briefly considered making a wager with me before deciding it was unethical.  He suggested a blood test and prescribed some wonder pills.  Within a couple of hours of taking the wonder pills all symptoms had disappeared, the following day the blood test confirmed elevated levels of uric acid in my blood, itself confirming that I had suffered from gout.

Why should I mention this now?  Well two days a ago my right ankle began to ache a little, within a day the pain had moved to my big toe and was reminiscent of that October morning over two years ago.  Belatedly I went into gout damage control, that is, I immediately stopped consuming any source of purins (leberwurst, blutwurst, etc) and stopped drinking copious amounts of alcohol.  Too little, too late.  Luckily we live close to a hospital which has a GP in attendance for such trivial matters, unfortunately for me he didn't know of the wonder pills previously prescribed to me in Australia and could only provide some heavy duty pain killers.  So today I sit in the living room, foot numb and elevated, typing whilst, Annika, Florian and Melanie are in the kitchen making Bratkartofel for lunch.  How all three of them are managing to fit in our kitchen at once is beyond me, I think Melanie might be on Florian's shoulders.

On reflection I have been drinking a little bit more than usual, for instance take last Wednesday when Harri the Finn, Beelzebub incarnate, forced me to drink 2 Mass of beer.  Then that night we went out for dinner with Christoph and Tania at the place which had continuous happy hour on cocktails.