Bad Bones and Colorful Bodies

 

I officially have bones that are porous enough to quality for yearly DEXA scans of my neck down past my hips to track my osteoporosis. It’s not a brag-able achievement or necessarily age-related in my case. I came by the condition quite simply because I haven’t had a working thyroid since I was a teenager and the medication I’ve had to take ever since leeches the calcium out of your bones. Yikes! If eating calcium-rich food had been an answer, my bones would be spinach colored petrified ice cream with flecks of salmon suspended in them like flies in amber and as hard as dinosaur bones displayed in museums. No such luck. All the standard treatments I’ve been on over the past 15 years haven’t stopped the loss of bone density. Until this year. Behold, this week my orthopedic doctor delivered the first good news I’ve ever gotten since I began my downward spiral towards dying in a nursing home after a hip fracture with no one near-by but a meanie from housekeeping who steals the desserts off my dinner trays and can’t speak English. Not only did the daily shots I’ve been taking this past year stop the loss of bone density, now there’s documented bone-building improvement! Not a lot but it’s there. The doctor said they consider just stopping the loss of density a successful treatment so I’m in Bonus Land. I feel like superwoman! Having a black-and-blue marked belly from all the injections has paid off. Thank you, Forteo!

Wednesday was a Red Hat Society walk-about day here in Widowville and this time we went to a small town near-by in apple country, population roughly 4,200. So what does a gaggle of a dozen ladies dressed in red and purple do in a small town on a pleasant summer day? Why we ate, shopped and ate again. Lunch was at an authentic Mexican restaurant and I learned a great strategy for ordering from the woman sitting next to me. She takes the mantra of eat-dessert-first to heart and she had her dessert served while the rest of us were getting our entrees then she had her enchiladas boxed up to take home. The dessert was a large fried tortilla rolled and stuffed with a rich cream cheese concoction, drizzled with caramel sauce and served with a perfectly shaped, baseball-sized mound of vanilla bean ice cream. I was jealous. Not a shy woman, she asked the waitress to have the chef send another dessert out to the table for “the ladies to pass around," adding, "he can do samples.” The waitress replied, “I can ask, but I don’t think he can do that.” Surprise, surprise! Not only did he send one out, he sent two! Talk about heaven in a spoon. I was in love.

Then we did a bit of shopping at an antique store and an old fashioned dime store and in between a trucker in an eighteen wheeler went by on Main Street and shifted gears down to a near-stop to yell something complimentary out the window. We all turned to look and I felt like I was fourteen again as I waved to the young guy who thought we all “rocked.” Afterward at an ice cream parlor the owner came out with a camera and wanted to photo document our visit. I felt just like a model from Advantage Style only without the style. Oh, I had on my vintage red pill box hat, red shirt and shoes but I had left all my bling at home. I don’t know why I do that. People get such a charge out of seeing a herd of red and purple clad senior women gracing their streets and places of business. Making people smile, makes you smile yourself and be reminded that life doesn’t need to be so serious. And that, dear readers, is the not-so-secret secret power of the Red Hat Society dress code. ©

For my contribution to having fun on the 4th of July, here's a great video from John Green over at Mental Floss. I think I'm in love with this guy's mind....