Forward From Here, What Gout Awareness Day Means to Us

I want to tell you about an elevator.

I was around 27. I’d been a swimmer my whole life, competitive, in the water at 5 a.m., the whole thing. I had just walked out of the appointment where I finally, after years of being dismissed by doctors, got the diagnosis. Gout. I was on crutches. I was relieved in a way I can’t really describe, like that deep full body relief of finally knowing what was wrong with me.

An older gentleman got into the elevator with me. He saw the crutches and looked at me with that warm, expectant face. You know, the one that’s waiting for a cool story. A ski accident, maybe. A triathlon gone wrong.

“What happened?” he asked.

I chuckled and said, “It’s gout.”

His face changed. He looked me up and down again, the swimmer’s shoulders, the young(ish) female face, the crutches, and he said, “Well, that’s not exciting.”

I didn’t have anything to say back. I just stood there. By the time the elevator hit the ground floor, the relief I’d walked in with was gone. And somewhere in that quiet elevator ride down, I started to understand: this is the deal now. Not just the disease. The way the world was going to treat me for having it.

I had just gotten my diagnosis. I was thirty seconds into being a person who knew what was wrong with her. And a stranger in an elevator had already taught me that this disease wasn’t the kind of thing people were going to take seriously when I told them about it.

That’s the moment I understood what was actually going on with gout. The disease was one thing. The shame around it was something else entirely. And the shame was doing almost as much damage.

That’s why Gout Awareness Day matters

The world isn’t usually paying much attention to gout. Most days of the year, gout is a punchline. A cartoon king with a bandaged foot and a fancy goblet. The reason a 27 year old female athlete on crutches gets told that’s not exciting by a stranger in an elevator.

Gout Awareness Day is the one day a year the door cracks open, even if only a tiny bit. The one day the world is paying just a little more attention, where we get to say, loud enough that a few extra people might actually hear it, HEY. This is what gout actually is!!

It’s the day the truth gets to reach a little further than it usually does. It’s the day gout awareness becomes something more than a hashtag, it becomes the post a woman scrolling on her phone might catch at exactly the right moment. Somebody who’s been quietly carrying this. Somebody who’s been told her whole life to just tough it out. Somebody whose story might change because of one share.

That’s worth showing up for. That’s worth shouting about. That’s why GSGA puts everything we have into this one day every single year.

Forward From Here

Forward From Here is what we’re calling this year’s Gout Awareness Day initiative. It’s not a campaign slogan to us though, it’s the actual promise.

It means we meet you wherever you are. No matter how stuck you feel. No matter how long you’ve been doing this alone. No matter how many doctors brushed past you, how many flares you’ve fought your way through, or how many things you’ve stopped saying yes to.

We leave the shame behind. We don’t look back.

We walk alongside you until you’re unstuck.

If you’re reading this, (and especially if you’re somebody who’s been tough your whole life, who’s been the one everybody else leans on, who’s been figuring this out alone because that’s just what you do), I want to say a couple of things to you directly.

I see you. We see you.

You don’t have to tough this one out by yourself. That’s not strength. That’s just what you got handed, and you can put it down.

Hope didn’t actually leave. It got buried under a lot of bad information and a lot of stigma and a lot of people who should have known better and didn’t. But it’s still there, we promise.

You don’t have to start over. You just have to know where you are right now, and we’ll show you what’s next from there.

Your next step is gonna be forward

The Gout Roadmap is what we built for this. Stage by stage, no judgment, no fresh start required. Wherever you are right now, even if you think you’re past the point where anything would help, the roadmap is where we walk you back to hope.

Start where you are, and we’ll take it from there.

Find your stage on the Gout Roadmap → goutsupportgroup.org/gout-roadmap

No more elevators.

P.S. This is me now ….

Flare free. Back in the water. Took longer than it should have, but I got here. → Your turn.