One Step Away From Relief
Lanny N. has known the discomfort and pain of gout since childhood. The disease, which tends to run in families, comes from the inability of a person's body to eliminate uric acid, leading to hyperuricaemia and the formation of crystals in the joints, particularly in the feet and hands. It's actually a kind of arthritis, and as acute attacks can become more frequent as a person ages, it can end up a chronic condition. However you want to look at it, the condition is painful at all times, and can be most unbearable at night, when even the weight of bedclothes brings on severe pain, and usually prevents sleep.
Taking aspirin, which is itself an acid, is not an option, but some of the other painkillers do help sometimes. Mr. N remembers when he was a child Dr. Hellman would treat acute attacks by immersing his feet in extremely hot water (probably with apple cider vinegar), a remedy that was just about as painful as the gout. Along the way somewhere, Mr. N. learned that pork especially exacerbated the condition, and started avoiding eating the meat, leading to less frequent attacks. He was graduated from high school and went on to Community College, where he took a degree in mechanical drawing. Then he returned to his hometown to work at the bottle factory for about 25 years, taking a disability retirement in 1997 when too many of his joints started hurting too often. Mr. N says that he had always had ideas about how things could be improved, and now that he was retired, he had time to work on developing them.
When his wife was seriously ill last year, he came up with several hospital related ideas while sitting in her room-he's still working out the details on those and some others. He also has a concept for a device, which when installed on vehicles, would allow only authorized vehicles to enter protected areas, or would enable law-enforcement officials to shut down any vehicle by cutting off its fuel supply with a radio signal. Another is for a machine that would exhume workers accidentally buried when the walls of a ditch cave in without further injuring them. He information on that one to the Central Intelligence Agency, but has not yet heard from them. The Foot and Body Protector is the first of his ideas to be formally registered with the United States Patent Office, the first step in the possible granting of a patent.
At this point, he is not giving out too many details, but the device would hold the bedcovers away from the afflicted person' skin by means of a simple framework that clamps to the bed. It is adjustable so that one person can have the covers elevated while the other sleeps the normal way. Having once talked with former St. Bonaventure basketball star Bob Lanier and noted his two-foot long feet, Mr. N. made the device so that it can raise the covers 24 inches over the mattress. He also has notes for a version that would blow warm or cold air underneath. Right now, he is hoping for a manufacturer to take notice of his idea and begin production, or maybe for a partner with some money to help him get started making the devices in the garage of his Brooklyn home. While that search and the patent process are going on, Mr. N will continue to look for new things that give him ideas for improving life and comfort for people.