GOUT

Just when you think things couldn't possibly get any worse, something comes along to take your mind clean off the troubles you thought you had. Yesterday, without warning, my left ankle puffed up to about twice its normal size, and began to feel as if it was full of broken glass. I hardly slept last night, limping from my bed to the medicine chest every hour from 3:00 to 7:00 for another colchicine tablet. It was a crippling attack of gout, which I always thought was an affliction of old Englishmen who ate too well and drank too much port. My doctor blamed it on a shrimp dinner I had on Sunday, and prescribed some wonder drugs which seem to have brought the monster under control -- at least for the time being. Thank God. I don't want to repeat that ordeal.