Discover Pauline's Journey with Osteoporosis

In this day and age, you deal with what's put in front of you, and you can't change it. I have always been an active person, but osteoporosis runs in my family. They did a bone scan, found out that my bones weren't as strong as they should have been. There are many diseases that cause osteoporosis.

It's very important to recognize that osteoporosis is a silent condition until fractures happen. I do have a fracture in one of the vertebrae, I think, in my back. I don't know how it happened.

Unfortunately two thirds of vertebral fractures are silent, and patients may not know that they've experienced a compression fracture in their back. And when the fractures are in the spine, it will cause back pain, height loss, lung compression, abdominal contents being compressed.

And with hip fractures, we also see a mortality rate, or a death rate of about 20% in women within the first several months to a year after the hip fracture. And in men, those numbers are approximately 30%.

So it is very important that we identify osteoporosis as early as possible, ideally before the first fracture. They need to be carefully evaluated by their physician and then the best treatment is selected for each individual patient based on what the findings are. I got my bone density results and I think they're really good.

I was thrilled to see that there was an improvement. As you get older, if you slow down, you can't get it back. It's too hard of a fight to get it back. Staying busy is important because then you don't get into that funk.

I do have a bit more confidence in myself. You have to find something that makes you want to fight back. It's great spending time with the grandchildren and being able to keep up with them. I need to be around for them. It was a necessity to, to fight do the best I could. So…