Today I am celebrating 70 years of living. It is my birthday – and I am having trouble getting my mind around being alive for 70 years. Maybe it is because I don’t have enough fingers and toes to count that high. Maybe it is because getting old is so very complex. In any case I have found that I am now attracted to roses in the fullness of their maturity whereas the me of my early years preferred buds with their full potential waiting to unfurl. I am feeling giddy-excited about arriving at what I consider a mature old age. Wow!

JB and I talk about death a lot – we are trying to figure out how to prepare for a life without each other. We know it will be painful and I am hoping he dies first because I can’t fathom leaving him behind to mourn. I worry…

For the life of me I don’t know why the New York Times published Sandeep Jauhar’s essay, “Nurses Are Not Doctors,” in the Opinion Pages on April 30, 2014. His essay argued that nurse practitioners shouldn’t practice independently.

As a nurse practitioner it’s obvious that I wouldn’t agree with his opinion but his case was lame. He cited only one study, which was published in 1999. It showed that primary care patients seen by nurse practitioners had 25 percent more specialty visits and 41 percent more hospital admissions than those seen by physicians. Not only was the study dated, it was limited in scope. Come on Sandeep Jauhar. Come on New York Times.

Jauhar further suggested we need more primary care physicians (true) and his solution to encourage graduates to go into primary practice rather than specialize was to increase salaries. Read Shikha Dalmia’s article in Forbes…