Oh good grief!

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Here's another one of those stories that really happened, but other people will read and think, "No way!  That couldn't have happened."

 Welcome to my life!

For the past couple of weeks my left foot has been hurting.  The pain is on the outside of my foot between my ankle and little toe, but it's closer to my ankle.  It's not an unbearable pain.  Mostly, it's just one of those annoying pains that drives you crazy because you have no idea why it hurts and you're not sure if it's bad enough to go to the doctor or not.  However, sometimes I manage to put my foot down just right and the really bad pain hits.

Today, I decided that enough was enough and went to the doctor.  I told the doctor that I had no idea what was wrong. I haven't hit it, twisted it or dropped anything on it.  As he was checking it out I said...

"Now see, you're touching it and the pain isn't so bad that I want to punch you, but I can really feel it and I don't like it."

He sent me down the hallway for x-rays.

When I saw the doctor again he said, "Well, I really want to tell you that you have a hairline fracture, but I can't tell you that because nothing showed up on the x-ray.  From the way you described the pain and what I see I thought for sure that's what it was."

I replied, "OK, I think that's good news"

He went on to say that he didn't know why I was in pain or why my foot was swollen.  Then he said.....

I don't think this is what it is, but we're going to draw some blood and check for gout.

This next part is going to make some of you mad, especially if you have or know and love someone with gout.  You're going to be angry and I apologize.  I really do, but I really just can't help myself sometimes.

He said the word GOUT  and I cracked up laughing.  I really did and I'm sorry but anytime someone says that word all I can think about is Henry VIII and thinking about Henry VIII makes me  remember seeing a movie about him when I was young and there was a scene where they showed him lying on his side on the floor in front of a bunch of food eating a giant turkey leg while wearing a fur coat and lots of rings and I just laugh. 

I just can't help it!  I try to think about Jonathan Rhys Myers in The Tudors because I love Jonathan Rhys Myers but I can't.  I just keep seeing that fat fur coated guy on the floor with a turkey leg.

Don't blame me though, it's really not my fault  The first time I ever heard about gout was when we were learning about Henry VIII in school.  That was when my teacher said he had it and that at that time it was considered a "rich man's disease" because only the rich people could afford the rich foods that tended to cause gout. So, you put what I learned in school together with the movie image that is forever burned into my brain and my immature self just can't help but laugh!

That's why I laughed.   Here's why the doctor laughed....

As I finally pulled myself together and stopped laughing long enough to speak again, I said.....

I don't think it's gout either because my toe doesn't hurt it's the side of my foot that hurts.

I didn't go into detail about how he should know it's the side of my foot that hurts because he saw and touched it and how I'm not a rich old man and I don't even own a fur coat or wear lots of rings.

I only left those details out because that's when he started laughing.

When he caught his breath long enough to talk again, he informed me that you can actually get gout in any joint, it's just most common in the big toe.

He gave me a prescription for an anti-inflamatory, told me to take it easy and stay off my foot as much as I can for the next couple of days asked if I wanted crutches and said he would call me when the results of the blood test came in.

I said no to the crutches because I've had to use them before and it wasn't pretty then I gathered what little was left of my dignity and limped out of there.

 As I left though, I couldn't help but think that it would have been really cool to have flung a fur coat over my shoulder and straightened my royal crown with a hand that was covered in rings as I walked away.