Paging through the New York Times a couple of weeks ago, I spotted the obituary for Tsai-Fan Yu, the physician who developed effective treatments for gout, including al­lop­uri­nol and colchicine.

I take al­lop­uri­nol every day, topping up with colchicine when I feel gouty, so I owe her a great debt of gratitude.

I blogged before about my gout. (Indeed, this is why I put up the mega repost yesterday of my old EraBlog posts, to make my gout post available before writing this one.)

Nothing has changed, for better or for worse, regarding my gout. I take al­lop­uri­nol every day and expect to do so for the rest of my life, unless a cure for gout is found. For­tu­nate­ly for me, it’s quite manageable. In the old days, gout could be both crippling and agonizing. I have had some severe attacks, early in this decade, before my case was de­fin­i­tive­ly diagnosed. One of my knees would swell up and become intensely painful. Even bending it slightly so that I could get into a car and be driven to a doctor to get painkillers would cause me to break out into a cold sweat. I’m damn glad I don’t have to live with that kind of pain on a daily basis.

I came across Gout News while re­search­ing this post, an ongoing compendium of gout-related news stories..