"This is an issue that's becoming more and more important because we're doing a better job of helping people live with chronic conditions," she says. "Falls can really reduce the person's ability to live independently."

Falls are often underreported, she says, because "many older adults not only are afraid of falling but hesitate to tell doctors or family that they've fallen. They see this as the beginning of the end and are afraid they'll end up in nursing homes if they admit to falls."

Cailleteau was living with a daughter near Houston when he fell, so his five children knew he had taken a spill. But he initially said he was fine. For two days, Cailleteau, who Mills says is never one to complain, said nothing about the pain in his neck. When he finally did say something, he got bad news.

It turned out he had broken a vertebrae in his neck and had to be hospitalized. On Feb. 2, he turned 92 in the hospital. He's still there.

Mills' strong, upbeat father — the man who had lunch with friends three to four times a week — is now weak, weary, depressed and humiliated by the betrayals of his formerly strong body.

"He's a totally different person now," Mills says. "That's what is so scary: the great unknown." She says she wasn't mentally prepared for this kind of "unknown future of him slowly deteriorating."

Falling at the end of one's life can be a "very, very miserable experience," Wilson says. "It's just a very tragic exit." But, she says, "it doesn't have to be."