Something to think about
A couple of weeks ago my grandmother fell and broke her leg. I mean really broke her leg, as in her thigh bent in a 90 degree angle outward. She tripped at the top of her stairs rushing to answer the phone. She is 85 and has a long history of breaking bones, but this one was different.
For a few months she has been having a lot of pain in her leg and about a month ago they took an x-ray and discovered a lesion on the bone. The day she broke her leg she was getting ready to go see the doctor to schedule a biopsy to see if it was cancerous. The bone broke exactly on that lesion.
What she found out when the orthopedics doctor looked at the x-rays was that the lesion was not cancerous, it was in fact caused by the osteoporosis medication she has been taking for almost 10 years and that the break is consistent with breaks others who used that medication have had. The medication was supposed to strengthen her bones, but instead made them incredibly brittle.
My grandmother now has a steel rod in her right femur, but is up and moving about, though slowly, and is thankfully cancer free. She has always been an active woman, she hiked around Mt. Rainier with some of the family 14 years ago, and she only stopped skiing in her 50s after she broke her back falling off a ladder while building a house. She still works full time, though now she is doing a lot of video conferencing from home, and is very frustrated at her lack of mobility.
For a few months she has been having a lot of pain in her leg and about a month ago they took an x-ray and discovered a lesion on the bone. The day she broke her leg she was getting ready to go see the doctor to schedule a biopsy to see if it was cancerous. The bone broke exactly on that lesion.
What she found out when the orthopedics doctor looked at the x-rays was that the lesion was not cancerous, it was in fact caused by the osteoporosis medication she has been taking for almost 10 years and that the break is consistent with breaks others who used that medication have had. The medication was supposed to strengthen her bones, but instead made them incredibly brittle.
My grandmother now has a steel rod in her right femur, but is up and moving about, though slowly, and is thankfully cancer free. She has always been an active woman, she hiked around Mt. Rainier with some of the family 14 years ago, and she only stopped skiing in her 50s after she broke her back falling off a ladder while building a house. She still works full time, though now she is doing a lot of video conferencing from home, and is very frustrated at her lack of mobility.