Food worries and a strange toenail demarcation.

For the last couple of weeks I've been food-binging. The really nice thing is that my gout doesn't appear to be coming back. I still feel a slight twinge from time-to-time, but nowhere near the crippling sensation of a screwdriver twisting between the bones behind my big toes (between the tarsals and metatarsals)

My gout usually appeared between
the metatarsals and tarsals or the
metatarsals and proximal phalanges

. I think my liver and kidney function may be back to normal. But still, I've been eating way too much. I tell myself "I'm not going to eat today" and of course it doesn't work.

Before I moved out to Washington I was really sick. I had a job working nights forty five miles away from home and because it was impossible to sleep during the day I had to force myself to stay in bed for twelve hours just to get the sleep I needed. I finally quit after working too many double-shifts. The icing on the cake was injuring my back while packing my car for the trip to Washington. My back hurt so bad I had to lean forward and stretch my lumbar region while driving. My gout was flaring at increasing rates or staying longer too.

At one point I had to put my plans on hold for a week and was stranded in a hotel bed for four days without food because I ran out. I could barely make it to the bathroom. I did not eat for four days. Moving into my apartment on the second floor was painful and I required a crutch for the first couple of weeks.

I struggled with pain throughout the summer and fall of 2012. It took at least five months for me to mostly recover from a night schedule except I'm still in the habit of spending too much time in bed. One night just after Christmas of 2012 my left knee which has been bothering me since I bent it sideways playing Volleyball back in the late 1990s stopped hurting. My back stopped hurting at the same time. The pain didn't completely subside, but enough that I could put on pants while standing freely. My gout decreased in frequency and intensity.

Last week I noticed a strange demarcation of thickness in my big toenail. It suddenly became thinner by what seems like a millimeter, at about half the distance from the cuticle to the end, from being extremely thick to being almost normal. According to Wikipedia, toenails usually take twelve to eighteen months to completely grow out, so I'm wondering if moving away from Springfield, Illinois also moved me away from a substance that was making me sick? Something in the water, perhaps?