With apologies to the Daniel Day Lewis movie…

Those who know me, know that I am a reasonably patient man. A type A/B personality that leans a little more toward B. I deal with things with a sense of humor.  But something is really testing my patience right now…

My Left Foot.

More specifically, the area of my left foot, just above my ankle on the outside.  It seems that sometime in early part of January, I managed to break my fibula without knowing it. I am told that this a particularly tricky thing to do.

It wasn’t an “Ow, I just broke my fibula” type of thing.  It was more like, “Wow, I am having some difficulty with walking. Boy, is my left leg sore. The more I use it, the more sore it gets.”  I saw my family doctor, who noted some localized swelling, but conceded that it wasn’t just a sprain. He ordered an xray, gave me some pain killers, and said to come back and see him if it did not get any better.

It didn’t get any better.

I decided a couple of days later to go see an orthopedic specialist (who shall remain nameless). After looking at my foot and the xrays for about 10 minutes, he said 1) that my whole ankle area showed evidence of previous trauma because of calcification and other indicators, and 2) he suspected either gout or a sprained ankle - even though the area where my pain was localized was above the ankle and not in the joint. He also acknowledged that although he didn’t see any typical symptoms to support gout or a sprain, he would just treat it as such and gave me a gout medicine (don’t remember the name).  He put me in an airboot, which I did appreciate. Unfortunately, the medicine made me very ill, and did not help the problem in my leg.  This was mid-January…

I went back to see him after two weeks, and there was no improvement. My wife and I discussed with him the possibility that it was a stress fracture, which he seemed to not even consider before.  (Karon and I had gone to the internet to see if we could figure out what was happening.)  He decided to wait two more weeks to re-xray, and told me to stay in the aircast and continue taking my anti-inflammatories…

Fast forward to two weeks later (mid-February). Still no improvement. Xray showed no apparent healing of any type of fracture. Doctor, although admittedly baffled, decided that it was related to a flair up of old injuries, and prescribed physical therapy for my ankle. Which was not the part of my foot that was hurting.

 Before I go any further, let’s talk about this whole “old injury” thing.  Way back in 1978, when I was still young and stupid, I made the poor choice of getting on a trampoline with 6 other people. Everything was fine until we got out of sync. Make that, I got out of sync. At some point, six went up as one went down. My left foot literally folded against my lower leg and flipped back into place. My ankle immediately swelled to the size of a small melon.  My girlfriend’s (at the time) family rushed me to the nearest emergency room, which was almost an hour away.  I ended up in a cast and on crutches for about 8 weeks.  I almost lost my job as a delivery driver for a local print shop, but was able to find someone to take my place while I healed.

From that point on, I had problems with my left foot. I had difficultly running for any sustained length of time (I managed to push through while I was in the military - running was always my most problematic area). That ankle was always more prone to twisting and other injury. And so it goes….

So that’s the previous trauma that continues to plague me today, and what the doctor thought the physical therapy would help. But. It. Did. Not.  Because the cause of my pain was yet undiscovered.