Better Bones

I broke a bone, now what?

In our “What is Osteoporosis” conversation, we showed how a shell that is thick, almost as dense as a stone, is difficult to break.  It is a great paperweight, fun to toss back into the sea as it has a little heft to it, and prime real estate for the appropriately sized sea creature.  Meanwhile, there are other beautiful shells that shimmer with their almost translucent thinness.  While these are stunning (and a crowd-pleaser if you can manage to bring them home in one piece), they rarely make the trip from the beach to anywhere beyond.  They have to be protected with the same ferociousness of a flower without any of the flexibility of a petal.  

In this same vein, the problem with breaking one of these osteoporotic bones is obvious with these shells firmly ensconced in view:  How do you attach a brace to splinters of bones, or “jenga” the shattered remnants of bone shards together when they crumble more at the touch of a hand?  More often than not, the result is probably one of devastation without solution.  There are a few rare and innovative company’s that have created work-arounds for piecing these together, so that the story is not one of complete paralyzation or devastation.  And these companies (filled with people much smarter than us!) are some of our friends, think-partners and visionaries as we work to transform the space of the disease that can be named.