The movie UP is incredibly emotional and exciting, and extremely entertaining.

However, we really have a problem with the folks who say this is the “funniest” Pixar movies ever. While it had many funny, inventive creations (the dogs, all of them, were just hysterical – one scene at dinner comes to mind when Muntz uses a word in conversation that sent the dogs into a frenzy. My dogs go crazy at the same word. Also, listen closely when the biplane flying dog bites its steering mechanism. Priceless.), the heavy, and I mean HEAVY scenes (Carl and Ellie’s montage, Russell’s conversation about his father, the scene where Muntz suddenly becomes suspicious of Carl and Russell) took you to the other extreme emotionally. My wife, bless her heart, said she has never had her chain yanked in a Pixar movie like she did at this one.

Another thing for parents of younger kids – This is NOT a children’s film, despite the fact it is animated and has a child as one of the main characters. Most previous Pixar films (with the exception of The Incredibles and Wall*E) were written with more of a kid’s audience in minds.  This movie is written at a more adult level with things in it kids will enjoy.

The adventure action in this puts most other family adventure movies to shame. And the bad guy puts the kid in REAL danger once things get going. There were several scenes that, even in 2D, really had us on the edge of our seats.

This is also the first Pixar movie, I think, that has focused on the blood associated with injuries (although the two instances are brief, but I think put there to make a point, like in the Incredibles when Mom tells the kids “These people will kill you.”)

All-in-all a great movie experience. Pixar has come a LONGGG way since Toy Story, and it’s great that they have the freedom to really UP the ante. I cannot WAIT to see what they are going to do with JOHN CARTER OF MARS!

So I went to physical therapy, even though the orthopedic doctor could not figure out specifically what was wrong with my foot and ankle.

I’ll just say this…Pain. Swelling – more than what I went to the doctor with. Something was definitely up, and it was really getting me down. Seriously. I think I may have been in a mild depression, not knowing what was going on. And so I decided to go to an actual sports medicine doctor.

The practice I chose to visit is one we took our son to many years ago. The doctor there diagnosed him as having stress fractures in his legs, and actually found them with an MRI, when other doctors just attributed his problems to “growing pains.”

Within the first five minutes with Dr. Dave, a P.A. at the practice, my wife and I realized we were finally with someone who knew their stuff.  He did a couple of things with my foot, really spent time on the area of localized pain, and declared that I had an “unhappy foot”. He said he could see a lot of damage to the tendons, but needed to do an MRI to see what else was wrong.

And what did the MRI show?  A trans-lateral break of my fibula which, by most reckoning, I had been walking around with for about two months. The doc said the bone looks like someone sawed straight through it. (I don’t remember that happening, although I did see a horror movie once where a guy had to do that to his own leg in order to escape a room. But I digress.)  Additionally, he said I have peroneal tendon dysfunction, tendonitus, and a chronically torn ligament. But before we could deal with those issues, my fibula had to heal.

That was a month ago. He put me in a knee-length hard cast for a month, but when I returned to his office to remove it, the pain above my ankle was still there, not quite as bad, but enough that I almost raised off the examining table when he touched it.

Apparently, in addition to being broken, my fibula has a “non-union” break, which means the broken edges of the bone are too far apart to heal properly. The result: I am back in a cast for six more weeks, as we wait for a three-month window from  the MRI diagnosis to start an electro-stimulus therapy to encourage the bone edges to grow back together. And again, we cannot even begin the physical therapy for the other problems until the bone is healed.

So that is the saga of My Left Foot so far.  We’ll see what happens next.

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.