I, like my father and grandfather, suffer from gout. A number of things can trigger it – alcohol, caffeine, high fructose corn syrup – and I get a serious flare up about once a year. Usually, it hits me in my feet, I have trouble walking for a day or two, and it goes away. The past couple of years, tough, I’ve been getting it in my knees. I can walk okay, and it can hold my weight, I just can’t bend it. I got my flare up last night, and it was so bad that at the end of the evening, I couldn’t get into the car normally to drive home (we were at a friend’s birthday party). It took me five minutes of careful maneuvering to finally get into the driver’s seat, at which point I just had to deal with the shooting pain that occurred every time I changed from the gas pedal to the brake pedal. Good times.