The Toe Synchro

Okay, this is a weird synchronicity but a good one.

On Rob’s birthday, we were in Orlando to celebrate and went out to dinner with our daughter to a place called Hawker’s. The idea here is that you order a number of tapas that everyone at your table can share. One of our platters included shrimp, and Rob helped himself to a single shrimp. Twice in the past three years, he has developed a swollen second toe after eating shrimp, a condition that was initially diagnosed as gout.

Since that first flare-up, he avoids shrimp. I no longer buy it when I grocery shop. But on this particular night, it being his birthday and all, he helped himself to a single shrimp. The next day, he flew to Minneapolis to start cleaning out his mother’s house to put it on the market because she recently went into an assisted living facility. On his second day there, his second toe started swelling.

Two weeks later, the toe was still swollen, red, deformed. He hobbled when he walked. It was difficult to do certain yoga positions when he taught his classes. We had done the Google research on gout and discovered which foods should be avoided. We had talked to other people who suffered flareups of gout and knew which drugs helped. I suggested we hit Whole Foods and see what holistic remedies they carried for gout.

I love our Whole Foods. Even though many – but not all – of their items are more expensive than our local Publix, I find that their employees actually know what they’re talking about. I went into the vitamin area and asked an employee what remedies they had for gout.

“Right over here,” she said, leading me up an aisle. “My husband has occasional flare-ups and we have a product that works for him every time.”

The product, Gouch, was priced at 23 bucks and change. “He’s in the midst of a flare-up,” I told her. “What dosage do you recommend?”

“It says two capsules, but when my husband has a flare-up, he takes three or four. This stuff works. After the flare-up is gone, he stops taking it.”

Into my basket it went.

That day, Rob took 4 capsules. By the next morning, the redness was gone, he could move his toe more freely. It still looked malformed, grotesque, a hunchback from another star system, but it no longer hurt and it didn’t feel hot to the touch. Today, it’s even better.

So here’s the synchronicity. We went to Whole Foods looking for a holistic remedy for gout. The first employee I asked not only knew the remedy, but her husband had used it for flare-ups and it had worked. I remarked that it was a beneficial synchro and Rob’s response was that it was a synchro only if it worked for him. Well, Rob, it appears to be working for you. Can we now call it a synchro?

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