I am from Cleveland, Ohio, and have a passion for patient care and healthcare policy. I aspire to build coalition among healthcare providers for optimal patient outcomes. I am dedicated to growing Nevada’s healthcare workforce through recruitment, education, and training to promote quality outcomes. I live in Las Vegas, NV.

​I’ve been a CRNA for 30 years, a graduate of the US Army Graduate program in Anesthesia Nursing. During my Army career I had multiple assignments involving clinical anesthesia, tactical operations, leadership and education. Since my retirement in 2005 I  have been in independent practice in the great state of Nevada since 2008 with an all CRNA group providing full service coverage to a critical access hospital in Elko and have been in Las Vegas since 2017 providing anesthesia to a variety of surgeons and specialties in varied settings. I’ve been a member of the NVANA board since 2018 serving CRNA’s in this state to preserve and enhance practice opportunities and Nevadans so they are the recipients if safe and economical anesthesia care. 

Time flies when you’re having fun, or doing something you love to do.

I practiced as a CRNA for 55 years and retired in 2023 from the greatest profession I could have ever chosen, and the younger, much more highly educated will take over care of the many patients on the roads less traveled. 

When I began my classes in September 1963, I was in a large 500 bed teaching hospital in Massachusetts, where we had surgery residents,  student RN nurses, a School of Anesthesia run by a solitary CRNA, and general practitioners providing a lot of the anesthesia.  We were mainly using open drop Ether proceeded by an ethyl chloride induction, or Cyclopropane and N2O/O2 via a red rubber non disposable ET.  We had thiopental occasionally, but mostly methohexital.  Both were rather barbaric as I now compare them to propofol.

I graduated June 1968, took boards the following week, and was immediately put into an OR with cases.   In our 7 room OR, we had one trained MDA from Holland, 3 CRNAs from the prior class, one bullet EKG monitor that was used on the sickest patients of the day, manual blood pressure cuffs and E cylinders for O2.  Our pharmacy “draw” consisted of morphine, demerol, ketamine, atropine, valium, vistaril, meprobamate, phenylephrine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, and succinylcholine (yes, it wasn’t refrigerated then). Our syringes were glass and the needles were metal. 

Every patient got an IV of 5% D/W administered via an 18 gauge non disposable needle.  Our machines at first were VERY basic with tanks for O2 and N2O and a #8 ether vaporizer and NO ventilators.  We eventually got Copper Kettles, a new narcotic called Nisentil, and an inhalation agent called Ethrane that we vaporized in the #8 vaporizer.

Our hospital also had an extension for really critical TB patients that we would treat with inhaled ether…..how barbaric! 
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During these years I’ve had one MH patient, one cerebral air embolism, one amniotic embolism, and 150 ruptured AAAs.   I learned a lot through trial and error and how to work alone, and CRNAs have come far in these years with advanced education, the equipment has become state of the art, drugs have improved vastly but, we still have much to learn. I ask those behind me to continue learning, be vigilant in their care, kind in their approach, honor and preserve our profession and never forget that we still are the best kept secret.