Eight years of caring for a mother with dementia will take things from you—sleep, time, the freedom of not being needed every hour. What Helen didn’t know, and what no one had thought to mention, was that it had also been harming her bones.
Helen was 68, a retired school teacher, when she came to my office three months after a fall that broke her wrist. Her primary care physician had done what most good doctors do: ordered a dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA) scan, started her on medication to prevent loss of bone density, and told her to take more calcium.