jjablkowski's blog

Your 2016 mini-profile is now available to you exclusively online.

The profile provides you with statistics based on the Medical Services Plan (MSP) payments made to you for services provided in the 2016 calendar year, including any settlements or retroactive payments issued as of 31 March 2017. This information allows you to monitor your billings in comparison to your peer group.

One of the most gratifying developments in medical care and in public attitudes is the increasing acceptance of children with developmental disabilities, genetic disorders, and chronic health conditions. Surrounded by caring parents, nonjudgemental siblings, neighbors, supporting friends, and accepting educational institutions the child is likely to receive exemplary care well into adolescent years.

Bessie, my lifelong partner, is in the relentless grip of the four horse riders of dementia: amnesia, agnosia, apraxia, and aphasia. Although the grip of each of these clinical conditions is devastating to her day-to-day functioning, I find that her aphasia makes her life, as it is, and our life as caregivers, particularly difficult. She cannot communicate her needs or likes with language that we can understand, and she does not understand or comprehend our linguistic outreach to her in our caring attempts. 

On 6 October 2017 the Women’s Health Research Institute (WHRI) in Vancouver, located on the BC Women’s Hospital campus, helped to launch an awareness campaign titled #ItsNotInYourHead. This campaign, championed by Dr Lori Brotto, a women’s health researcher, clinician, and executive director of the WHRI, centres on a chronic genital pain condition called provoked vestibulodynia (PVD).

On 8 March 2018, International Women’s Day, you would not expect to read a blog post focused on a male caregiver, but please hear me out.