Olive Mc Carthy Interview, copyright Victoria Mary Clarke 2001-11-27

‘Don’t hug Granny,” a little girl is told.  ‘She might break.’ This isn’t Harry Potter wizardry at work, this is reality.  All over Ireland, grannies are literally disintegrating, crumbling, snapping.  Olive Mc Carthy is one such granny.  She suffers from the “silent crippler”, osteoporosis, which causes her bones to lose density and become fragile, so fragile that they could easily snap, if she’s not careful.  Olive is waiting for me at the door of her house.  Is she polishing the window?  I’m not sure.  She’s small, wiry, athletic, with a pixie haircut and an elfin face that lights up when she smiles.  She’s nervous, she tells me.  It’s not every day she talks to a reporter.  We talk about sport.  I turn on the tape-machine.  She stops talking.  “I’ve clammed  up all of a sudden,” she says.
For anyone to be afraid of their bones disintegrating is bad, but Olive was a competitive sportswoman for seven years and it’s heart-breaking to see her enthusiasm, as she tells me about it.
“I ran marathons and half marathons and I did track running and cross-country.  I covered the spectrum, really,” she says.  She asks me if I run or do any exercise.  I say that I swim.  “Would you not go an a treadmill?’ she asks me.  I say I never do, no.
“When I got into it, I was in my late thirties,” she says.  “When  you have four children, you don’t get time to go out running.”
            What about those people who run with their baby buggies? I say.  Olive snorts.
            “I  think they’re obnoxious!” she laughs.  But she definitely approves of people exercising.  Although, she warns, you could get fanatical about it, and that would be just as bad as not doing any exercise at all.
            Were you fanatical?  I ask her.  She thinks about it.
            “I don’t think so.  I was in an athletic club and that’s what you do, you do your training.  But you have a life as well.  Your running is a big part of your life, but you fit it in with everything else.”
            Did she start running very young?
            I did, but you know when you get into your teens, it isn’t cool.  At least it wasn’t then.  Girls weren’t equal to boys, when I was in my teens.
            When was that?
            She laughs.  That would have been in the late fifties, early sixties.  We hadn’t reached the era of feminism and equality.  It wasn’t really the thing to do, for girls to compete.  Camogie was acceptable, because that was a girl’s game.  And hockey, providing your skirt was long enough.  It was only when the running boom happened in the late seventies, and the marathon started, that women suddenly said ‘Well, I don’t give a fiddler’s about anyone else I’m getting out there and if they don’t like it that’s their problem.”  And it was wonderful to see so many women, of all shapes and sizes participating and raising millions of pounds for charity.  And it’s still happening.”
I couldn’t even imagine running a marathon , I tell her, admiringly.  She laughs.  “Yes you could!  A few sessions on the treadmill, a couple of times a week and you would soon be able to do it.  An hour on a treadmill and that’s six miles.”
            Isn’t it easier to run on a treadmill, than it is to run on the road? I ask.
            “It is, because the concrete is very hard on your joints.  But you just need a good pair of shoes.  And the euphoria of having achieved something like a marathon far outweighs the pain.’  I don’t believe her. 
            The osteoporosis was diagnosed ten years ago.  At that time osteoporosis was as rare as leprosy or malaria, Olive says.  It wasn’t that people didn’t suffer from it, it just wasn’t very well known.  Professor Moira O Brien, at Trinity College Dublin tells me that the disease was not defined until 1994 and the number of sufferers is unknown.  But osteoporosis can be prevented, by maintaining the proper amounts of calcium and vitamin D in the diet, and by ensuring that your hormones are in balance, according to Professor O’ Brien.  Competitive athletes, she tells me, can lose body fat and their periods can often stop, indicating a hormone imbalance.  She recommends HRT as a way of preventing osteoporosis and says that the contraceptive pill also helps to keep oestrogen levels in balance.
Anorexics, also, are susceptible, because they deprive their bodies of calcium and because they, too, tend to have hormonal imbalances.  Olive agrees. 
“I think the media has hyped body image out of all proportion, and I think that’s why there is so much anorexia.  Too many girls see the likes of Kate Moss and want to look like them, because these are the role models that are being held up for people.  And they are starving themselves.  They don’t realise the damage that they are doing to their bone density when they are not getting the proper amount of calcium.”
Thankfully, Olive has been able to prevent her bones from deteriorating further, by having treatment.  She takes something called Fosamax, once a week and has regular scans, to ascertain her bone density.   She’s delighted that she chanced upon an article about osteoporosis in a magazine, one day and decided to have a scan, because things could be a lot worse, if she had allowed the disease to progress.  But there have been problems, with the treatment.
“You used to have to take the tablets  every morning and you couldn’t have any kind of food or drink for at least half an hour after taking the tablet.   You would have to stay either standing up or moving around, afterwards, too, you weren’t supposed to lie down.  Like most people, I love a coffee, the minute I open my eyes in the morning, so it’s bit of a drag to have to wait.  But now they’ve brought out a once a week tablet, which is fantastic, because I’m usually up at half past five or six o clock.” 
That’s very early, I say. She laughs. 
“Yes, but then I’m in bed early, I don’t have a nightlife, like you young people!.  Some people are at their best at night, I’m at my best in the morning.  And I find that if I go out walking, the morning time is the best time to go, because there’s no traffic.” 
            Olive has had to make some changes to her lifestyle, because of the disease.  She still goes walking, but she can no longer go running.  And she is extra careful, in wet weather, to avoid falling, because a tiny bump can result in a broken bone.
“I’ve had to increase my intake of calcium, so I eat more dairy products,” she tells me.  ‘Super-milk is fortified with calcium and it’s a low fat milk, if you are worried about the fat content.  You can get low-fat cheese, too, and yoghurt.  Professor O’Brien is a walking encyclopaedia  on the subject!  Unfortunately, it was a bit too late when I found out I had osteoporosis.  The tablets will maintain my bone mass as it is, but there is no way you can replace what’s lost.  I’m just trying to highlight the problem, and make women aware of it and I’m just saying please go and have a bone scan.  If you are fine, well that’s grand, you have nothing to worry about, but keep it monitored, so there is absolutely no fear of you developing a severe form of osteoporosis.”  I promise to do just that.