Winning My Battle with Osteoporosis

I'm Not Slowing Down
by Ann Richards, Richard U. Levine, M.D.

Former Texas governor Ann Richards shares her struggle with osteoporosis in an inspirational, eye-opening book that will help other women to triumph over this debilitating disease.

Twenty-eight million Americans will face osteoporosis. Often triggered by hormonal changes that occur after menopause, osteoporosis results in the fracturing of bones, which can prove fatal to the elderly. One out of every six affected women will break her hip; only one out of three will regain her independence.

In 1996, after falling and fracturing her hand, Ann Richards went for a bone density test. She was diagnosed with osteopenia, an early stage of osteoporosis. After witnessing both of her grandmothers and her mother fall victim to the disease, Richards was determined to overcome its incapacitating effects. She began a physician-approved regimen of medication and dramatically changed her lifestyle.

In I'm Not Slowing Down, the former Texas governor, known for her straight talk, tells women what they need to know to combat this devastating disease.

Chapter 1

Right after I was elected governor of Texas, we were in turmoil trying to put things together, hire staff, move into the capitol office, and move from my house to the Governor's Mansion. In the midst of all this, we got a notice that the Queen of England was coming to Austin. It is a real undertaking to entertain the queen. We had to go to "entertain the queen school" to learn how to act around her. Secret Service flew in from Washington to tell us where we could and could not go and what we could and could not do. On the day she was to arrive, I was in my office at the capitol when I got the call saying the queen was at the airport. I went tearing down the stairs and running across the rotunda to meet her on the capitol steps and my mother's voice went through my head as clear as a bell saying, "Where do you think you are going, to see the Queen of England?" And I thought, Yes, Mama, I am!

MAMA

People do not think of osteoporosis as a fatal disease, but it is. My mother died of it. Well, that is not literally true. She died from cancer, but I swear her spirit died from osteoporosis.

Mama's name was Iona Warren, but everyone called her Ona. She was an industrious, thrifty child of the Great Depression, born and raised in a tiny town outside of Hico called Hogjaw. Her father was a farmer and they were dirt poor, but she was ambitious and hardworking-the only one of three sisters to leave home and make a life on her own. In fact, her sisters still lived in Hico when I was a child. Mama finished high school, an enormous accomplishment in her time, and left the family home to move to the big city of Waco. Today, young women do this all the time, but back then it was highly unusual and courageous. My uncle I. V. lived in Waco and he encouraged Mama to come to the city. In Waco, she took a job in a dry goods store and later she met my father on a blind date.

I have told the story of the day I was born to people in the past because it perfectly illustrates her character. Before she went into labor, Mama had arranged for a neighbor lady to fix Daddy's supper on the day she delivered me, but the woman did not know how to wring a chicken's neck. To kill a chicken, you break its neck, and it takes skill to pop your arm in a way that breaks the chicken's neck clean. When my mother would do it, the head of the chicken would literally come off. That day, Mama delivered me in the morning and she was lying in bed when the neighbor came in to say she did not know how to kill the chicken. Mama said, "Bring it here," and she lay in that bed and wrung the chicken's neck.

Both my parents came from poor farming families, and all of my young life I remember Mama trying to figure out how she could make a little money, but whatever she made went for necessities or into the savings. When she was not working to make money, there were chores to be done. She spent every second housekeeping, tending the vegetable garden, sewing clothes, or taking care of our chickens.

There was no time reserved for having fun because she always had so much work to do, but she said, "You do whatever you have to do and you do it without whining." It was from Mama that I learned the value of hard work and to never linger over those things in life that could hold you back, and it had a great influence on me.

Mama taught me that you should never expect anyone else, a man included, to do what you can do for yourself. About five years before Mama died, I went to visit her and when I walked onto her patio, I looked up and saw her on the roof of the Austin condo she and my father had bought after they had sold the house in Waco. She was in her early eighties. She looked down at me and said, "I know you are going to fuss at me, but the TV said it was going to rain and the man who was supposed to clean out the gutters did not come. The periwinkles I planted the other day will be washed out if I do not clean these gutters." I just said, "Well, Mama, you have got a perfectly good reason for being on that roof and I just hope when I am your age that I can get up on a roof if I need to."

Despite her independence, my mama began to break off in pieces. She broke her wrist, and then her arm. Mama had lost about two inches of height over the years, but no one ever mentioned the word "osteoporosis." The shrinking and broken bones were considered a natural part of aging. She was so independent that even with the cast on her arm, she refused to let me hire household help. Mama was impatient with illness. If you scratched your knee or had a stomachache, she would say, "Just get over it. I do not want to hear about that. It will be gone in the morning." Or she would say, "Go wash it off with some soap and water." It was not acceptable to feel bad because it slowed you down, and being sick was a waste of time. With each of her injuries it became harder and harder for her to keep up with the housework, but she was not going to let anybody else do it. So far as she was concerned they were not going to do it right and she would have to do it anyhow. After Daddy died and I was working in Washington, D.C., she was on her own much of the time.

I was spending half of my time in Washington, D.C., but the law firm I worked for had an office in Austin, so I would commute from D.C. to Austin every week or so to make sure she was doing okay.

As the years went by, there were a few warning signs that Mama was not well. She would lose her train of thought in the middle of a sentence. She got lost driving from her house to my house. Her driving scared the family to no end! When she fell and broke her arm, she had to stop driving and we took her car one day and disabled it so that she could not drive. We kept telling her we would get it fixed, but of course we were not going to do it. Then one day, my son Clark and his wife, Sharon, were sitting at the kitchen table with Mama when she fainted. They took her to the hospital, and it was then that we learned my mother had a malignant lesion on her brain.

Mama was sent for radiation treatment. She was sick and lost her hair, but she would not wear a wig, so I bought scarves and hats for her. When I gave them to her, though, she would say, "Why did you spend your money on that?" Or I would take her to the hospital and when we arrived she would say, "I know how busy you are so do not bother coming in with me." That was her way. She did not want to be an inconvenience and I understand it because I worry that I will end up an inconvenience to my children.

Not long after she was diagnosed with cancer, she left something burning on the stove in her condominium. And though I did not want to relocate her on top of everything else, I knew there was no way she could continue to live alone. I really admire the Chinese and the Mexican cultures for how they take care of their elders by bringing them into the family, but there was no way I could make a living and give Mama the care she needed. Besides, my mother cherished her own space and she would have hated living under my roof. It is funny how much like my mother I become as I get older, and how, like her, I often crave solitude. I suppose we get set in our ways, used to our own spaces, our own ways of doing things, but I still needed to figure out something that would make Mama comfortable. I asked Mama if she would allow me to take a look at an assisted-living apartment for her and she said yes, she thought she would, and she said that she was just as concerned about her ability to care for herself as I was.

After considering a few options, we found an assisted-living facility in Austin that combined three sections: go-go, slow-go, and no-go. I wanted a place that would allow her to remain in the same facility; moving is so disorienting. The rules of the facility required Mama to be able to take care of herself when we first bought the apartment. This is called the "go-go" stage because she could still care for herself. If we waited until she could no longer care for herself, it would be too late to get her into that particular facility. Once we bought the apartment, it would be Mama's for the rest of her life, and if she needed assistance it was available in the slow-go or no-go sections. When she died, the go-go apartment would be sold to someone else.

Not long after our discussion, we moved Mama into her new assisted-living apartment. What a job! Years and years of accumulated stuff-my mother saved everything. By the end of her life, she had clothes hanging in her closet she had not worn in years. She was certain that one day she would need that old sequin dress! It had reached the point where there was no more room in the closet and she had started hanging things on a rod over the bathtub. The garage was filled with boxes full of paper bags from the grocery store and plastic sacks full of more plastic sacks. She never threw away a ragged towel or old socks since these could be used for cleaning. Before my father died I had arranged for Meals on Wheels to help out, and when I came to visit, I would find the refrigerator filled with leftover Meals on Wheels boxes. If they did not eat everything in the box, Mama would save what was left. Even after she was on her own, she saved her leftovers. The problem was, she could not remember what was in the cartons-it was just a mess. And because Mama was a gardener there were always boxes and sacks of dirt in the garage. She was big on bringing dirt home. She would see some dirt on the side of the road that looked rich, stop, get the shovel out of the trunk, and fill up a box. When we moved her things out of the condo, she loaded a box of dirt into the car trunk because she said she would need dirt for potting plants. She had antique china dolls with elaborate dresses, and there were china cabinets full of cut glass and figurines. We found multiple lists: "silver service in hot water-heater closet, Indian jewelry under stairs." Time had dulled her memory so she had to make lists, but then she could not remember where she'd put the lists. Mama spent a lifetime worrying that I would not appreciate the things she collected, but the truth is that toward the end she lost interest in all that stuff herself. All that mattered to her were family and friends; everything else sort of fell away. All she cared about was having us visit. Life was measured from visit to visit.

From I'm Not Slowing Down by Ann Richards with Richard U. Levine, M.D. by permission of Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Copyright © Ann Richards, 2003. All rights reserved. This excerpt, or any parts thereof, may not be reproduced without permission.

About the Author

Ann Richards was governor of Texas from 1990 to 1994, and has been active in politics for over half a century. In 1988, she gained national prominence with her keynote address at the Democratic National Convention. She divides her time between Texas and New York City. Her personal osteoporosis regime includes a careful diet, weight-bearing and aerobic exercises, vitamins, and Evista.

Richard U. Levine, M.D., is a Clinical Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Collage of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and Attending Physician at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, where he serves as Vice-Chairman in the department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. He has provided the medical expertise in I'm Not Slowing Down.