Happy New Years

..and a late Merry Christmas.

I hate PHP. Using it has been more trouble than it's worth. I've enjoyed learning it, but I think it's time to switch most of the site back to static html. The guestbook is already broken and certain images are not showing correctly.
Speaking of broken, my liver is on it's way out.


About a month ago, during one of my drunken stupors, I'd managed to stomp my foot down on a sheet of metal and sliced my toe open pretty bad. It caused me to limp for about 2 weeks. Once it came time to get back to heavy lifting, I found it extremely painful to use my ankle. At first, I thought it was caused by it not being properly used for the weeks prior, but it only got worse throughout the week. It wasn't until I woke up to a swollen ankle I decided to visit the doctor.
He took a look at the wound on my toe, commented that I was clean and healing nicely but it was possible that the infection could have made it way into my ankle. He prescribed me anti-biotics and told me to come back if it didn't improve in the next two days.
Two days went by and my condition only got worse. I started waking in the middle of the night with severe pain in my joints and the swelling hadn't improved.

During my second visit with the doctor, I decided to confess that I am an alcoholic as an attempt to help narrow down the cause. At first his theory was Septic Arthritis (..which is not good. ~Norm McDonald) or potentially goat, but he wouldn't know for sure until my complete blood work came back.
Once my blood work came back, it tested negative for septic and rheumatoid arthritis, so now the likely diagnosis is gout. It's good to know I'm not dying from stage 7 turbo cancer, but gout doesn't seem to be something that's going to go away anytime soon.

I'm currently on steroid hormones just to manage the pain, but it's only a temporary fix. I need to fully embrace the gout diet (for what looks like the rest of my life) if I want to be pain free.
Which includes just about everything I like. Just google your favourite foods and ask if they're bad for gout. Red meat, seafood, chicken, oats, spinach, yeast extracts, etc, etc. One of the worst being alcohol. My blood test also showed that my liver was in 'bad' shape.
Thankfully, the pain has been so distracting, I've been able to ignore the urge to drink. I've gone from half a bottle of JW Red label a night to about 3 or 4 drinks with dry days in between. I know it's not ideal, but it's at the recommendation of my GP that I don't kick it cold turkey. Thankfully, the damage to my liver appears to be reversible if I can keep at this pace.

I never thought I would say this, but I'm looking forward to getting back to work into the new year. Maybe it would be different if I was going out, but being stuck in bed and at my computer for 4 weeks has given me the blues.

~Lexian