The fact that a disease is chronic rather than acute does not mean it is any less devastating. Osteoporosis, for example, which affects 30 percent of postmenopausal women, is one of the major causes of wrist, spine and hip fractures. Each year in the United States about 250,000 older people, mainly older women, suffer a hip fracture. Nearly half of them are never able to walk independently again. Overcoming Social Isolation.
Illness deprives persons of the strength and mobility necessary to navigate many public spaces.
Isolation is inevitable unless the surrounding community actively reaches out to include the sick individual. Ill or disabled persons shatter our illusions of invulnerability, reminding us of our own precarious hold on life. We isolate them because we are afraid of them. They frequently internalize these negative perceptions to the detriment of their own treatment. In How We Die , Dr. Sherwin Nuland writes of encountering women who were so ashamed of having breast cancer that they did not seek medical attention until the disease had eaten away their chest walls.