As a former football player and wrestler who’d had three knee operations, Scott thought he knew pain. Then he had his first gout attack.

While the pain was new to him, Scott was familiar with gout because his dad had been living with it for 20 years.Gout, a form of inflammatory arthritis, develops in some people who have high levels of uric acid in the blood. The acid can form needle-like crystals in a joint and cause sudden, severe episodes of pain, , (tenderness and redness are not severe – focus on pain, warmth and swelling), warmth and swelling in the joints. For many people, including Scott, the first symptom of gout is excruciating pain and swelling in the big toe. Gout may also appear in another lower-body joint, such as the ankle or knee.

“Basically I described what happened, the doctor looked at my foot, told me I had gout and prescribed some pain medicine,” Scott says. “The pain medicine didn’t do much though. I stopped taking it after a few days and tried to manage around the pain.”
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