Footnote

(Published in Business Standard today)

I woke up the other morning to find that I couldn’t step on my left foot without pain. It was so unexpected and so painful that I thought I might have broken a bone, except that there hadn’t been any tripping or bumping during the previous day, nor, in fact, during the previous year, when I might have occasioned a sprain or a broken bone. A bit of poking and prodding narrowed it down to my left big toe.

I mentioned it to my mother at breakfast. She said, with no pause—nor, I’d like to point out, medical qualification, “Probably gout. Rich man’s disease. From drinking too much and eating too much rich food.” She proceeded to smirk into her newspaper. She often makes up things to fit her darkest theories about me, so I went to the internet, which knows its stuff, and looked up my symptoms.

Here’s what I got: Gout. Ever heard of gout? Rich man’s disease. From drinking too much and eating too much rich food.

I hate the internet.

My aunt dropped in for tea and the two of them had a lovely time laughing at me. They particularly enjoyed the fact that the classic image of the gout sufferer is an elderly earl in a nightcap, suffocating in rolls of his own fat, aching toe propped up on a footstool, paying for a lifetime of frivolous overindulgence with joint pain that sends his howls of agony echoing through his draughty castle. Some people have no empathy.

I went back to the internet and decided to go with other possibilities, like sesamoiditis (an inflammation of the little bones around the big toe) which I can attribute to tango dancing and an insanely healthy exercise regimen; or to osteoarthritis, for which I can blame genetics, aka my mother. I like that one. I will apply an ice pack and refuse to go to the doctor and if that ends with my foot being sawed off in an operating theatre, so be it. The alternative, which is to acknowledge that frivolous overindulgence might have played its part, is simply too shaming to contemplate, and anyway, I don’t have a castle to howl into.

However, if it is gout, that’s both ironic and really bad news, because I’m about to travel a great distance to two places, one to watch a couple of music concerts, which covers frivolity, and the other to patiently observe and mimic the habits of the locals, who are known for their enthusiastic drinking, which covers overindulgence. There is no length to which I will not go to be culturally sensitive (when in Rome, etc etc), and if that involves imbibing a lot of ale and spirits, well, my big toe can just lump it. An added wrinkle is that I’m going to be driving a rental car around the second place, so sure, it would be nice to have two working feet, but I feel I can get away with one.

The best way to deal with inexplicable physical ailments is to go with the theory that most are self-limiting and can be ignored away. I have places to go and things to do, so if I have to drag a gouty foot along with me, I will. Anyway, what does the Internet know? Getting online is the best way to conclude that your cold is a symptom of a brain tumour. And what does my mother know? If all goes according to plan she will have a gouty foot of her own at the end of this frivolous, overindulgent holiday, because she’s coming with me.