the history - diagnosis to now

My first knowledge of this was around10 months ago, when I moved to the city of Sydney and began walking everywhere. My right foot, which had been hurting off and on for around a year before, suddenly got a lot worse, and the pain would not go away.

The Doctor ordered blood tests, for gout, and x-rays. Tests came back with several bits of news. I had Vitamin D deficiency – two years in gloomy cloudy London had taken their toll. Gout was ruled out. The x-ray revealed what was likely to be osteo-arthritis on the big toe joint. The Doctor was perfunctory, dismissive of my questions, and I was shipped off to a Podiatrist.

Never having encountered a Podiatrist before, and thinking they only cut toe-nails, I delayed following up on this, and instead opted for the anti-inflammatories which had also been prescribed.

Pfizer brand, this was the first drug from a global pharmaceutical that I had ever taken. Having seen that film Love and Other Drugs, with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenghal, I was very wary about these bright red miniscule capsules. Only one tiny glossy red capsule once a day, and within 4 days these tiny 10mm x 2mm things had swept away all trace of pain. I was totally freaked out. How could such a tiny thing find and treat such a tiny location as my nig toe joint within such a relatively massive body? It did not have a brain or consciousness, so it was therefore doing what it did to the tiny joint on the ball of my right foot, to the whole of my body, indiscriminately. This I did not like. So I stopped, and have not been back to anti-inflammaory drugs since.

Anti-inflammation became my new quest. I asked anyone and everyone about it. I went to health food shops and chemists and grilled the assistants until I found vaguley knowledgeable ones. My Chinese flatmate suggested strong ginger brews at any opportunity, which I greedily drank. I also chased up fresh tumeric, and chopped that into rice dishes at night. Serrendipitously, a friend also revealed she’d just started a Green Smoothie regime, which lead to me looking into Vitamin K deficiency and the notion that it can be linked to arthritis. I even tried the rather disgusting Wild Atlantic Salmon fish oil, lemon flavoured which made it even more disgusting, drinking an oil is a revolting sensation as it gags down your throat. I also tried Chandroitin (or whatever it’s called) – basically derived from dried cow bones – so again this is along the lines of treating something with the thing that it’s missing – eg if you have poor bones, eat bone-like substances, if you need more brain power eat brains etc etc – to me this seems superstitious, so I was happy to leave that stuff behind, it did not work quickly enough for me, or meet my own developing theories about all of this.

Nonetheless, all of this takes time, I was working full time and trying to have a social life, and I was still uncertain about what shoes to wear that would cause least pain. I did not know how to treat that, and even though the inflammation subsided, my joint still hurt. After about two months, I went to the recommended Podiatrist.