Gout in the 20s

[Muhamad Fikri Musa]

Hello, I’m 26year old and have been diagnosed with gout. I have been prescribed with allopurinol after having 4 attacks this year alone. I may have to change my job because the last attack have caused me to missed work for 10days. I work in retail by the way so i have to stand on my feet for minimum 8 hours a day(usually close to 13hours). I’ve also read that allopurinol will causes gout attack when you first started. Basically it’s been hard for me because I’m 26 and my career development have been stunted because of gout And i have no college degree so I’m stuck with entry level position and I’m thinking changing my job to be a e-hailing driver. I feel depressed because of this. Anybody in this forum is facing the same thing as i do?

[nobody]

Hello,
It’s great that you’re treating your gout when you’re still young. Make sure your blood tests are showing that the treatment works. Hopefully it’ll all be behind you before long.
If you’d like to keep working in retail, you probably won’t have to give that up. But if you wanted to quit anyway, this would indeed be a good time to try something which wouldn’t require you to stand all day long.

If you’ve just started allopurinol, maybe it would be prudent to take something else on top to prevent attacks. Colchicine is the classic drug to take in this situation but people who tolerate anti-inflammatories well can simply take them every day for a while instead.
Taking enough anti-inflammatories at the very beginning of an attack can also make it much less severe so that’s something you ought to discuss with a doctor if you haven’t already (because when the attack comes, you can’t wait for a doctor). This would perhaps allow you to keep working.
Good luck!

[Muhamad Fikri Musa]

Thank you for your advice, I’ve also have taken colchicine for couple of years now but as time goes by it’s effectiveness also lessening. It’s hard because i had my first attack when i was 19 years old.

Back then the doctor was not convinced that i have gout because of my age. I used to have attack once a year until this couple of years when it becomes frequent.

[nobody]

Yeah, 19 years old is unusually young. I was hoping you had less than 6 or 7 years of untreated gout. With such a history, you may need some patience with the treatment and it’s especially important to make sure it makes the amount of uric acid in your blood fall to a sufficiently low level.
One benefit of your age is that you can probably tolerate most drugs better than the average gout patient. Maybe it’s different in your country but some doctors see a young man and assume he doesn’t need drugs because he’s strong even though a young man might actually need more because his body processes drugs quicker. Sometimes it helps to be a bit emotional with the doctor to help them understand that the problem is serious.

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