The last 3 weeks have really been tough on Jim. While he was lucky enough to go about 6 weeks with no gout attack, one Sunday morning 3 weeks ago it hit him with the vengeance. The night before we had gone out to dinner with friends. For the first time I actually thought to myself how normal that was. It felt good.
It was, however, short lived. Jim woke up with gout in both his feet and knees. Walking was impossible so the wheel chair came in handy. We started on Predisone and his usual regimine. This seemed different though. He never really had it in his feet and it was more painful than normal. After a week there seemed little improvement. We happened to have an appointment with his rheumatologist. She increased his prednisone and sent him home. Things were starting to look up until he took a fall.
Losing his balance and the pain still in his feet prohibited him from making his way up a step and he fell backwards on his right side. My mom and I were not able to get him up so we called 911. Three of them were able to get him on his feet but he complained of pain in his right elbow and we wanted to make sure his belly (catheter) were ok. At 11:00 am off to the ER we went. After x-rays nothing was broken or fractured. His blood sugar was very high (581) which concerned them. We knew his blood sugar was high from his last visit to the clinic. It seems the high doses of Prednisone he was taking played havoc with his blood sugar. While they wanted to keep him overnight, we insisted we would prefer to follow up with his renal team and have them deal with it. At 6:45 pm we were able to come home.
I asked Jim the next day what hurt. In his usual humor he said everything but his nose hurt. Sad...but funny.
Yesterday his PD nurse was able to get us into an endocrinologist about his high blood sugar. While they don't think it is the start of diabetes, they are pretty sure it is Prednisone induced. He started on insulin 4 times a day and we have to take his blood sugar 4 times a day as well. While it's slowly coming down, we had to start up the Prednisone again today because now the gout has gone from his foot to his knee.
I keep telling Jim his transplant is going to be a piece of cake after all this. Once he gets his new kidney, the gout problems hopefully will go away never to return. We can only hope....
For the good news....we find out a week from today the date for the transplant. Can't come soon enough for us.
