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....

Treatments and Plans

 

 “Women my age don’t have babies because we’d put them down

and forget where we left them.”

author unknown 

Breaking a bone in my elbow last spring was probably a blessing in disguise because it caused my orthopedic doctor to set a fire under my internist to start osteoporosis treatment again. A year ago I ended a five year round of Flomax---the maximum length of time you can stay on that drug---but a recent bone density test proved it didn’t do much good. I’ve lost 27% of my bone mass, three and a half inches in height and have had broken three bones since menopause. I’m a hip or back fracture waiting to happen.

It took an entire month for the insurance company to look for a reason to disapprove the new treatment plan but they couldn’t find one. So this week I had to take a class at the hospital to learn the ends and out of injecting my self on a daily basis with Forteo. Let me tell you, I was nervous about doing my first shot. I’ve had allergic reactions to drugs in the past so I was worried this drug would kick start my chronic hives again. The last time I had them they lasted nineteen months without a break but that’s a story for the People Who Scratch Themselves to Death Gazette.  I left the injection class hive free so now I’m looking forward to making a pin cushion out of my stomach. Forteo is supposed to be the best drug on the market for building bone mass and strength and the nurse teaching the class says many people actually feel better in four short months. Wouldn’t that be nice. Give me a year and I’ll be leaping over tall buildings in a single bound. Forteo is just another name for Kryptonite, so says the rumor I’m starting here and now.

I’ve got a long, boring and lonely holiday weekend lined up but after that my September calendar has twenty scheduled social events mixed in with hum-drum appointments starting next week with my first Red Hat Society meeting in ten years. It’s going to feel like going back to school. I’ve unpacked my box of red and purple hats, scarves and other bling. I’ve purchased a new red notebook, pen and shoes. And I’ve got enough red and purple clothing already in my closet that I won’t have trouble pulling some outfits together. All I need to buy is a fancy, garden party dress come next spring. If you remember what it was like to play dress-up when you were a little kid you’ll understand the thrill of wearing the Red Hat Society garb. Ya, you might feel silly when you go out in public the first few times you do it. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it, to be reminded that we can grow older without losing our playful spirit. As their website says, “Red Hatters refuse to passively sit back and allow life to slowly lose its fizz. We prop open the doors to our minds, determined to explore, learn, and find ways to infuse play into our lives.” Wearing the Red Hat ‘garb’ is the only hard and fast rule that all chapters have to follow. It's like putting on your play clothes knowing you're going to the park to play on the swing set and monkey bars. 

To balance out the Red Hat silliness I’ll spend plenty of time working at the new museum in September. I’m a fish out of water with all the retired teachers and city fathers volunteering there but so far they are very accepting of me, the new kid on the block. But donating stuff to their auction isn't going so well. Two of the three pieces I donated to the fundraiser are going in the museum for display instead. Nothing makes you feel old like knowing your prize possessions belong in a museum. I'm just kidding about that. Don would be tickled pink to know these things will be forever preserved in his hometown museum. I was actually hoping for the reaction they received. 

I’ve never had to work so hard at finding a new place for myself in this big, lonely world. Well, that’s not entirely true. I remember back in the late sixties I wrote a letter to Ann Lander’s advice column on this very topic and I actually got a reply. She told me to get out in the world doing things that I enjoy and the rest will follow naturally. “You can’t meet people sitting at home every night.” So I immersed myself in leisure time classes, sports, a service sorority and assorted activities in an effort to meet people. It worked. I met Don and the rest is history. Widowhood has brought me full circle; here I am again forty-four years later doing the same things for the same reasons. Well, not quite the same. I’m not looking for a soul mate this time. I’m just looking for a gaggle of gal pals I can call my own. ©.