It's Saturday morning. I just got back from a six-mile hike with my husband — real elevation, switchbacks, loose rock. This morning he had to ask me to slow down.
I'm 51 now.
Two years ago I was at my kitchen table at 1 a.m., terrified I'd end up like my mother.
I didn't.
I went back for another DEXA scan last month. My T-score is now -1.1 — it started at -2.4. My doctor lined up all four of my scans and said, "Linda, you're almost out of the osteopenia range. I've never watched someone walk this back without medication."
But that's not what I came to tell you.
My daughter had a baby girl last year.
The first time I held her, I remembered reading those words at that kitchen table — "too scared to pick up my future grandchildren" — and being certain that would be me. Watching from a chair. Too fragile to be trusted with her.
That's not how it went.
I get down on the floor with her. I lift her over my head. Last week I caught her before she rolled off the couch — fast, without thinking, without one second of fear about what it might cost me.
I'm the grandmother I was afraid I'd never get to be.
I'm just... Linda again. The same woman who walked 3 miles every morning for 20 years. The one I thought I lost on the afternoon of that phone call.
She came back.
I don't know how long your numbers have been sliding, or how many things you've already tried. I just know what it felt like to believe I was out of options — and to be wrong about it.
You're not out of options either.
Your bone-builders have been waiting this whole time. They've had the bricks. They've just been too tired to lift them.
Give them their energy back. Start before your next scan — not after it.
— Linda Miller