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Patty Duke died today last week. A lot of Baby Boomers have died recently. Garry Shandling. David Bowie. Glenn Frey. And now, Patty Duke. I was connected to her in a very personal way. When we were preteens, my best friend (also my cousin), and I used to sit in front of the TV in our sponge curlers and Lanz nightgowns, fantasizing about what it would be like to be Patty, always getting into trouble (but having fun) in high school. We loved, too, Cathy, her identical perfectly behaved but boring cousin from Scotland (with that adorable accent). I was always Cathy. This is what high school would be like, falling in love with our French teachers, switching places to fool teachers, Cathy getting a flu shot when they thought she was Patty. And that flip haircut! Kind of like us. Then came the drugs and divorces, and bipolar disorder, and no more sweet Patty Lane. The fairy tale ended. For a long time, her life was in decline. Just like a lot of us. But t...

OK.  So we taught the world about free love and dropping acid and Woodstock.  The Baby Boomers greedily did and bought and changed just about everything in their path in the '60s and '70s. And now we may be getting cancer in a big way, too. A new study says, as people age, a diagnosis of cancer becomes more possible -- some would say probable.  And now the front end of our bragging, boasting, bossy bunch is reaching that age (though I beat them to it when I turned 50!). "As 10,000 baby boomers reach 65 each day, the incidence of cancer is increasing, estimated to increase by 67% between 2010 and 2030," newswise.com reports. Cancer is diagnosed at a higher rate in older adults, accounts for more survivors, and yet, results in more deaths than in younger patients. “The increase in the number of older adults, the association of cancer with aging, the workforce shortage, and the financial stressors across the health care system and family networks all contribute ...

There's a lot of stuff going around about Obamacare , but guess who's going to benefit most, experts say?  Of course.  The Baby Boomers (full disclosure: I'm one). The Wall Street Journal reports that "the Affordable Care Act could deliver a major windfall to some boomers who are self-employed or unemployed, and to early retirees, by sharply cutting the costs of their health insurance. And a new report this week by Christopher Weaver and Louise Radnofsky of The Wall Street Journal shows just how big a price break some of those older consumers could get ." Woo hoo!  That's me.  For over 15 years I've been paying for my own health insurance, pricey from the beginning but outrageous when I hit both the 50-year mark and was diagnosed with cancer at the same time. I now pay over $800 a month just for me (at one point, it was over $1,000). And that's with a $5,000 deductible, so basically I'm paying my insurance company to go to the doctor. The ...

It's not something I like to think about, even though my father needs one.  But as we Baby Boomers age, there's going to be a growing shortage of caregivers , according to Tara Bahrampour of The Washington Post. And let's face it, much as we do everything we can to retard the activity of Father Time, it's coming for all of us, if we're lucky. "Americans should expect an enormous shortage in caregivers for older people in the coming decades, with a dearth of friends and family members available to care for the baby-boom generation as it ages, according to a report released Monday by AARP," Bahrampour writes. She points out that, by 2030, there will be only four potential caregivers available for each person 80 or older, down from a high of more than seven in 2010. By 2050, when boomers are between 86 and 104, the ratio will drop below 3 to 1. Currently, about 14 percent of potential caregivers — defined as people 45 to 64 — provide care for someone 80...

I've always loved books.  Maybe that's why I'm a writer.  But I couldn't wait to get home from anywhere out and dive back into my book. Now studies are showing that bookworms may hold on to their memories longer than those who don't read a lot or write or "participate in brain-stimulating activities," according to newswise.com. “Our study suggests that exercising your brain by taking part in activities such as these across a person’s lifetime, from childhood through old age, is important for brain health in old age,” the Web site quotes study author Robert S. Wilson, PhD, with Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. With so many Baby Boomers inching up into their 70's, of course, there's a massive interest in brain maintenance.  Whether it's exercise (which has also recently been touted as a way to stay mentally fit), or doing crossword puzzles (though exercise beats this, too), retaining memory is replacing liposuction and Botox a...

It used to creep me out when a new baby was born somewhere in our extended family and one of our older members would say, "That means someone will die." While I'm not too terribly superstitious (knock on wood), that always used to make me look around uneasily when a baby was born, or when someone died.  It seemed to be pretty true. The New York Times reports today that a baby is no longer being born every time someone dies .  In fact, for whites, fewer babies were born this year than older folks dying.  This year, for the first time in at least a century, according to Sam Roberts, the two did not cancel each other out.  More people died.  So?  Actually, it's quite significant. Roberts calls it "a benchmark that heralds profound demographic change." The number of non-Hispanic white Americans is expected to begin declining by the end of this decade.       “These new census estimates are an early signal alerting us to the impending decl...

We’re killing ourselves.  The number of baby boomers committing suicide has almost doubled in the last 11 years. “From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7,” Tara Parker-Pope writes at The New York Times. She notes that, although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women, far more men take their own lives – 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per 100,000. Most at risk are men in their 50s, whose suicide rate doubled during this time period.  Experts believe it’s a combination of tough financial times and the availability of pain killers like Oxy Contin that people take to feel better. And some think it’s greatly underreported. “It is the baby boomer group where we see the highest rates of suicide,” the C.D.C.’s deputy director, Ileana Arias, told Parker-Pope. “There may be something about that group, and how th...