As many of you probably don’t know, my mother passed away in late April after 3 weeks on hospice. I finally got Kaiser to make the referral! But that’s a story for another day. Mom lived with us during her last 3 years of life and it was often a struggle for all of us. But in those last few hours I was afforded the opportunity to share with her why I had become a nurse. She never understood why I wouldn’t want to be a doctor instead. Her (much older) cousin had indeed been one of the first women doctors in the U.S. and my mother had considered medicine…