It's been a really long time since I have posted anything here - over 2 years. It's not that I haven't been active, I have been, but since my last post, life as I knew it pretty much exploded. If you read my last post, Stuck Midstream, you might have seen the footnote that my mother-in-law, Hilda, passed away from ovarian cancer at the end of August, 2013. At the same time, literally, my father-in-law was diagnosed with dementia. Add in a pregnancy, the premature delivery of a wonderful boy, Hugo, who needed multiple surgeries, a lack of any maternity benefits that saw me returning to part-time work within 3 months of delivery and well...let's just say I've been a bit overwhelmed in my immersion experience as the working mother of child with special needs and the daughter-in-law of a senior with dementia. We've had some more ups and downs with the system, having to remove Hugo from the system here in Saskatoon and take him to Alberta Children's in Calgary and learning the ins and outs of community/home care from the family side (I was a community physical therapist for 10 years) and the stark lack of resources for dementia care. We are experiencing the system along the spectrum, from pediatrics to geriatrics, and I continue to be amazed at how outside the system this "insider" can feel.

As the year begins, I am recommitting to my blog, to sharing the last two years of experiences and insights, as well as anything new that comes along, both as a means for self-reflection and to also provide some hopefully unique and helpful insight for those of us trying to make the system better. Stay tuned :-)