She's an attractive woman, looks pretty good for her age, though she's not yet near sixty, keeps her hair dyed a quite attractive red, the mother of three, two young women in their 20s and a young man, the baby of the family. They're neighbours of ours, live almost directly across the street. They were living there before we moved in, two years after they bought their house on the street. Strangely enough, her husband and mine knew one another for a short period of time when they both worked for the same government department. He had just recently graduated from university and was brought into the department, just when my husband who had worked there for quite awhile, was on the cusp of leaving to join another department.

Now, all these years later, she is retired, their children are post-university but the youngest, and they've been spending a lot of their time at a family cottage they own an hour's drive away; the parents, that is. We'd always noticed that she moved strangely, a curvature in her back barely noticeable, her head forward on her neck, turtle-like. Physical characteristics we automatically assign to those suffering from osteoporosis.

Now she informs us she was diagnosed with arthritic-osteoporosis two years ago. Initially, when one of her feet swelled horribly, she was diagnosed with gout, and a strong anti-gout medication prescribed. A follow-up urine test indicated she wasn't suffering from gout, however.

She had arisen one morning in pain, her foot swollen, and she was almost completely incapacitated. A quick trip to emergency resulted. Now she knows that what she had experienced was related to arthritis. And the medication prescribed for her condition, basically an anti-inflammatory, comes with quite a few nasty side-effects. Despite which, she has learned to cope with the side-effects, and continues to depend on the medication to ameliorate the symptoms of her chronic disability.

Which, without the drug she has grown dependent upon, would leave her with sleepless nights full of arthritic pain. She has discovered a balance, although she grimaces at the very thought of dependency on a drug to make her life tolerable. Like me, she enjoys gardening. Unlike me, she is unable to bend over, so she has learned to manage as best she can within the physical limitations she is now a partial prisoner to.

She is no different in personality now than she ever was; cheerful and personable. We make do as we must.