DEAR DR. GOTT: My mother-in-law is bed-ridden after a fall (in 2008) which broke her left femur at the portion that comes out of the ball. The pain of rehabilitation was too much and she refused to do the work needed to be able to walk again. She was sent home with home care and physical therapy just to keep her moving. She refused to exercise enough to show improvement so her insurance discontinued payment for her therapy.

She is now 87 and insists on living at home so we have developed an exercise program similar to what she was doing at therapy and she has improved remarkably, but she still doesn’t walk. She is on 2 mg of Coumadin (daily), 25 milligrams of metoprolol (half in the am, half in the pm) and 70 milligrams of Fosamax (weekly). She also takes a multivitamin. Her doctors say she is in fine health.
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