It is World Osteoporosis Day.Hug a cow. Drink its milk. Love life without a fractured hip.
It has been two years since I learned my bone density is greater than 2.5 standard deviations below the average for a woman my age. Two point seven standard deviations, last time I checked.
I recoiled - a spineless ball of fear. How long before I would shrink? At merely 5'3" I could still use a couple inches in the upward direction.
The fear of stigma was worse. Could I tell anybody without being pegged a skinny-legged, perfection-seeking, obsessive compulsive distance runner. I always ate my dinner. And by dinner I don't mean a saltine cracker and an apple wedge.
I was healthy. Sound in body, healthy in mind, until that day. And after that day, it wasn't my spine that crumbled - but my self-assurance. Despite any reluctance to accept population-based statistics as a sound diagnoses, my confidence was rapidly taking a turn. In a fleeting moment, I ceased to percieve myself as strong. In an effect, it was not a disordered lifestyle that affected my bone matrix, but the matrix that disordered my lifestyle.
Over the next two years, I was plagued not by the silent disease, but by a loud and menacing voice in my mind, convincing me that I was sick.
Mayoclinic doesnt list hypochondria as a side effect of osteoporosis.
