Still can’t walk after a week of Prednisone

Last week, I started experiencing extreme pain in my big toe/ball of foot area. I went to urgent care, doctor said it was probably gout, prescribed me some prednisone, starting at 40mg daily, tapering down 10mg every 3 days. Took a uric acid test that came out at 8.3, which I guess confirmed his suspicion. The first day of prednisone brought the pain from a 10 to like a 7. A couple more days brought it to maybe like a 5, to the point where I could kind of limp very slowly.

I’m about a week in, and the pain is creeping up. Tried putting on socks/shoes this morning and I almost passed out. I can put some weight on it now, but holy cow any sort of pressure around my foot just feels like death. Does this mean that the crystals formed in my toe aren’t breaking up? I’m getting kind of worried prednisone is just masking the symptoms and my body isn’t actually healing, which means I’ll be in a world of pain as I taper more off.

(Rant time) I’m 28 years old, and I have absolutely zero family history of gout. I’ve been recently struggling with acid reflux issues, so my diet has been fairly clean for months (and even more so at this point). I was already at a fairly healthy weight at 5’9”, 170lbs, but have since dropped to under 150lbs. I feel so unlucky.