In recognition of May’s observance of National Osteoporosis Awareness Month, we wanted to pass along a personal story from someone living with osteoporosis. Thank you to Katherine Bedeian, a nurse practitioner in Oakland, Calif., for sharing her experiences with us.
Here I sit, staring at the computer, watching my inbox, waiting. This must be how a college student feels while waiting for her grades to appear in her inbox or some other sacred digital holding place. Much like the college student, what I wait for will also determine my future: physically, for at least the next 6-8 weeks, while psychologically, it could doom my chances for the future that I had hoped for.
You see, I have osteoporosis, the bones of a mummy. When I fall, I have a greater-than-average likelihood of breaking a bone. I recently fell on my outstretched hand. That’s the no-no of falls. With all the symptoms of either a bad sprain or a fracture, here I sit and wait.
I am a woman in my mid-60s. I grew up in the rough and tumble of rural life surrounded by five brothers and a neighborhood filled with boys. Needless to say, when I was a child, I was considered a tomboy, which today simply means I was athletic.
I remember my first fracture. I was riding a small horse named Toby over a hill when Toby slipped, falling with her full weight onto my lower leg. This resulted in the first of many fractures I would experience.
It probably wasn’t until my 30s that I fractured another bone. Again, I was doing something physical, so it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Then as the years went on, it seemed like every time I fell, I would break a bone. Then at age 45, on a gorgeous fall day after one of the first rains of the season, I slipped out on my bicycle and landed on my left side. When I tried to get up, I knew something was wrong. I had broken my hip.
After talking to other cyclists, I found out this was not uncommon: Cement is hard, and Spandex offers no protection. After surgery, physical therapy, and one solid year of walking with a limp, the only thing I had to show for my fall was a long incisional scar masking the metal holding my femur bone together.
Life went on. I continued to bike. I continued to run the rough trails of the open space that dot my community in Northern California. I continued to let go of those thoughts that underneath the surface of my muscular frame, I could actually be fragile.
Before I fractured my hip, I had a heel bone density test during a health fair at my workplace. When the nice gentleman with the machine reported my T-score was -2, I beamed with pride, thinking my bone density was only slightly below that of a superhero. Then he explained to me that -2 is indicative of osteopenia, or low bone density. I argued with him that his machine must be wrong. I have been an athlete all my life, I had run numerous 5K and 10 k races, I had trained for and completed a marathon, I had biked hundreds of miles, and I had more hikes under my belt than most people. All these activities while being a female of child-bearing potential. I demanded a do-over. The machine must have been broken.
It was not until I fractured my wrist at age 52 that I had the courage to ask my doctor for a DXA scan. I informed him that I had seven fractures in my medical history, two requiring hardware to hold my bones together. It was time for me to know if it was bad luck or bad bones. Because a DXA scan was not recommended at my age, he fussed with me a bit. He looked at my muscular mesomorphic physique and said, “You don’t have osteoporosis, but OK, if you insist, but let’s do a cholesterol screen since you are due.” Needless to say, my cholesterol was perfect, but my bones were not.
Many people with osteoporosis do not know they have it until they break a bone. According to the most recent literature, more than 10 million Americans currently have osteoporosis, which is defined as a chronic, progressive disease characterized by low bone mass, microarchitecture deterioration of bone tissue, bone fragility, and an increased risk of fracture. Roughly 50 percent of white women and 20 percent of white men will have a fracture related to osteoporosis in their lifetime; although black men and women are at lower risk of osteoporosis, those with osteoporosis have similar fracture risk. More than one-fifth of people who break a hip will die within one year. With the aging of the U.S. population, the burden of osteoporosis is likely to increase.
So today, I sit by my computer, waiting to see if I passed or failed, if once again I am broken, if once again I become a statistic to add to the chronic and progressive nature of osteoporosis. However, come tomorrow, I will continue to run, to dance, to do all those things in life that may lead to a fall, but most likely with a little less abandon.
