Personal Narrative: Osteogensis Imperfecta

It was around 8:15 A.M. and I was on my way to Midwest Orthopedic in Pekin for my foot to get X-Rays because I had a boot on and the wanted me to have a check up. I was in the car with my mom and we just finished getting Starbucks and were driving on the way there. Once we got there we had to fill in some paperwork and wait for the nurse to come and get me.

Osteopetrosis is a rare, genetic disease that causes extremely dense and brittle bones. This is because individuals affected with osteopetrosis do not have normal osteoclasts, which bones need to work correctly. Healthy bones require properly functioning osteoblasts and osteoclasts. Osteoblasts are responsible for making new bones and osteoclasts are bone cells that are responsible for bone resorption, which is the breaking down of bones and providing space for new bone marrow to grow. An individual with osteopetrosis has osteoclasts that do not function properly, therefore their bones are not healthy (Stocks, Wang, Thompson, Stocks, & Horwitz, 1998).

The most significant challenged I ever faced is being diagnosed with severe Wolff-Parkinson-White (WPW) syndrome my junior year of college. Receiving my diagnosis I was upset and negative about the situation. I knew financially I could not get the surgery, and I knew I needed to push on through college. Nevertheless, I never let my diagnosis get the best of me. My diagnosis did not get the best of me because I started to see it as a positive challenge. Additionally, I realized my diagnosis taught me important life lessons. One of the life lessons taught to me, by my diagnosis, was to not add constant stress to the situation out of my control. If a situation is out of my control, like being diagnosed with WPW, the worst response is constant

A barrier that I had to break or overcome is the fact that I have WPW or ( Wolf Parkinsons White Syndrome), a heart defect. I uses many values to help me overcome my barrier. The main three I used were courage,determination,and excellence. I used COURAGE to help me realize that I had to have surgery to help me and my heart even though it did not work I know personally that I can have any kind of surgery and not be afraid. The same way Jackie Robinson used courage to ignore that man that was yelling at him even though he wanted to he knew the right thing is to not say anything at all. One of the main values I used is DETERMINATION,because right before surgery I was wanting to back out and not have it,but then I started telling myself I would

A hardship that my family and I faced was my mother being placed on disability. When I was four years old, she stepped off a ladder wrong and slipped a disk in her back. To repair the disk, it required multiple surgeries. As a result, she is still on disability. During this time, my father was the main breadwinner in our house, so money was sometimes a tough thing to come by. On top of my mother’s medical issues, I have my own medical issues. I have always had some minor issues, but in the last couple of years they have started to become more serious. During my senior year, I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome. This syndrome is chronic and so are some of the other issues that comes with it. Now that I am currently enrolled in college,

I have had some barriers I have had overcome most of them most of them. One of my biggest barriers that I have overcome is my bigger brother Jake dying to cancer. His full name was Jacob Conner Lashley and he had neuroblastoma in his stomach. The people who were involved was my Mom, my Dad, and my big sister. It happened at St. Jude's research hospital in tennessee.I faced this

Breaking a bone is an injury that some people experience maybe once or a few times throughout their life, but for the people who are diagnosed with osteogenesis imperfecta, their lives are very different. Osteogenesis imperfecta (OI), otherwise known as brittle bone disease, is a genetic disorder that causes bones to break very easily with little to no apparent trauma. Dealing with broken bones often becomes the norm for people who are diagnosed with this condition. The severity between different types of OI can range from mild to very severe, causing death before or shortly after birth. Although OI is rare, the people diagnosed often have other associated health problems with their joints, skeletal structure, and dental health.1 OI affects

Vitamin intake is a commonly overlooked necessity in basic nutritional health. What most people do not know is that certain vitamin deficiencies can cause many health risks and problems. Many people believe that are getting all the vitamins they need from their diet, however most of the time they are not. One of the most common vitamin deficiencies is the low intake of Vitamin D. There are some vitamins that are produced by the body such as vitamin K; however some of the most important vitamins are not produced by the body. Vitamin D is one of the vitamins that our body needs to function correctly that is not naturally produced by the body. Vitamin D can be consumed through

Recent studies have demonstrated that the acceleration of osteopontin (OPN) expression in human pancreatic duct epithelial cells contributes to various diseases such as diabetes and pancreatic cancer. What is osteopontin (OPN) expression and what is its effect on the pancreatic duct epithelial cells of individuals affected with diabetes and obesity?

I have enjoyed reading your post, Kerry. I found your comment on Osteomyelitis informative and thought provoking. As you have stated, Osteomyelitis is an infection of the bone that may start in the bone or may be a result of an infection that has started elsewhere in the body and traveled through the blood stream to the bone. Osteomyelitis may be difficult to treat as it is sometimes located deep in the bone. Osteomyelitis most likely affects long bones in children while affect the vertebrae in adults. Diabetics may develop osteomyelitis in their feet. Osteomyelitis may be difficult to treat; however, it may be treated successfully with strong intravenous antibiotics combined with surgery (Arias, Betancur, Pinzón, Arango, & Prada, 2015). Risk

According to Dains, et.al., (2016), a useful structure to differentiate limb pain entails finding out if the symptoms are caused by a systemic disease, joint/musculoskeletal disease, or musculoskeletal injury. In the pediatric population, pain and aches in the limbs are common, nevertheless it is difficult to assess the presence, intensity, and location of the pain. Assessing pain in young children is challenging, usually the parents are the ones who made the interpretation of the pain. According to Dains, et. al., (2016), failure or refusal to move an extremity or walk may be a sign of pain in a young child.

The most significant challenged I have faced is having three major surgeries over the course of two years. The May of my 8th grade year, my appendix burst and I had emergency surgery to remove all the poison in my stomach. Then 7 months later, when I was a Freshman at PDHS, I discovered the ACL in my left knee was torn. Then the following year, the March of my Sophomore year I tore my ACL, MCL, and meniscus in my right knee during my last home game in the Aztec stadium. As a student athlete this news was devastating to me because before all three surgeries I knew I was going to have to be out of soccer for months and school for several weeks. The following months after I missed quite a bit of school due to recovery, physical therapy, and doctors

Life holds many obstacles. They are put there to challenge us physically and mentally in the hope that we become a better person. Some people face more demanding obstacles. When I was about six years old, blotches of white starting appearing on my skin. They were most abundant around my ankles, knee, hips, and elbows. My parents got worried and took me to see my doctor. I was diagnosed with vitiligo. Vitiligo is a chronic skin disease that results in loss of skin pigment. Once my parents heard what I had, they made the connection. Autoimmune disorders run in the family and many of my relatives also had vitiligo. This condition is incurable, but my doctor gave me a prescription to try to reduce the enlargement of the areas. After several months,

Metabolic bone disease (MBD) is a condition most commonly seen in captive reptiles; when left untreated the condition can be extremely debilitating or even fatal to the pet.

     Osteoporosis is a health ailment which causes bones to become so porous that they can break easily. Osteoporosis literally means 'porous bones'. The bones in our skeleton are made of a thick outer shell and a strong inner mesh filled with collagen [protein], calcium salts and other minerals. The inside looks like honeycomb, with blood vessels and bone marrow in the spaces between bone. Osteoporosis occurs when the holes between bone become bigger, making it fragile and liable to break easily. Osteoporosis usually affects the whole skeleton but it most commonly causes breaks or fractures to bone in the wrist, spine and hip.