It started as a pain in my big toe, forcing me to hobble to the bus stop on my way to work.
As the day wore on, my foot swelled to the point where it felt like it was bursting out of my shoe. The area around the toe had become red and inflamed and my left foot had ballooned to practically twice the size of my right one.
The pain worsened, reaching an excruciating level at night; sleep was impossible. No matter what position I sought, the pain was all-enveloping and constant. Any contact with the duvet only increased the pain, which became so intense that I fantasised about hacking off the offending toe with a machete.
The journey to the doctor was an ordeal in itself. I could not wear shoes as my foot had expanded by so much. So I had to wear sandals. The five-minute walk to the doctor stretched out into a 15-minute endurance test. My doctor's diagnosis was immediate: gout.
Gout comes from the Latin gutta (drop) - with reference to the medieval "flowing down of humours". As early as the fourth century BC, Hippocrates wrote about gout as an affliction of old men and a product of high living. Like many people, I associated gout with tubby English gentlemen smoking cigars, sipping port. Numerous Dickens characters were afflicted with gout, while, in real life, Henry VIII, Nostradamus, Isaac Newton and Benjamin Franklin suffered with it.
The impression that gout is the result of intemperance is commonplace today.
"The disease of kings and dukes," one colleague said. "Been at the port again," was another refrain, albeit mixed with sympathy. While most people see gout as a result of overindulgence, they also have a notion that it can be most painful.
Gout in fact is one of the most common forms of arthritis. It is caused by uric acid, a by-product of the body's metabolism. In a gout attack, uric acid builds up in the body to such an extent that the kidneys are unable to flush it out.
The acid crystallises, then collects around joints. In 70% of cases, the first area hit is the big toe, as crystals form in the coolest parts of the body. Once these crystals form, the body's immune system thinks they are foreign and attacks them. The gout is really the body's immune system attacking the crystals.
An increase of uric acid may arise from several reasons. Higher than normal levels may stem from hereditary causes or from the reasons that cause many to associate gout with too much of the good life: obesity; too much drinking (beer more than wine); certain kinds of food (red meat, shellfish, offal foods such as liver, kidneys and sweetbreads).
Although a relatively small number people in the UK suffer from gout, the number is rising. About 0.5% of the UK population suffered from gout in the 1950s; now the figure is around 1%, or 500,000 people.
Gout occurs most frequently in men between the ages of 40 and 60, particularly in those who are overweight or genetically predisposed. The latest twist to this old disease is the growing number of women who have it. Gout once rarely struck women, but now one in five people with the disease is female.
Some experts have linked gout to the Atkins diet. As a high-protein diet, it burns off fat and produces lactic acid. It then joins a queue of acids waiting to be expelled by the kidneys and uric acid levels remain high. Crystallisation follows.
The good news about gout is that an attack can go away quickly with anti-inflammatory drugs, rest and drinking lots of water. The bad news - apart from the jokes - is that there is no cure for it. It will come and go - how often depends on how much of those forbidden foods you indulge in.
