Fifty-year-old Shane is an active volunteer, a former hockey player and a trivia buff.

Like many couples, he and his wife Joanne often tease each other.

“She doesn’t have a volume switch. I’ve been trying to find it for years,” he says of Joanne, who is so soft-spoken you need to lean in close to hear her.

“I didn’t come with a volume switch. Or a return policy,” Joanne quietly quips back.

We live in a society that not only normalizes alcohol use, but seems to endorse it. “It’s 5 o’clock somewhere,” after all.

Alcohol consumption has been steadily increasing over the years, and according to the University of Victoria alcohol monitoring project, people living in the Interior Health region have the highest rate of alcohol consumption in the province.

Medical students based at the UBC Okanagan campus in Kelowna are helping front-line physicians in the battle against COVID-19 in the B.C. Interior.

With the temporary suspension of clinical training in hospitals and clinics across the province, many medical students began looking for other ways to support physicians and patients during the pandemic.

Dealing with a severe speech disorder and transitioning from hospital to home was more than enough for the Freeborn family to cope with. Adding COVID-19 to the mix and hospital visitor restrictions, and problems could have easily gone from bad to worse.

Despite those challenges, this family was able to find a way around those obstacles, with the help of Kelly Talbott, a speech language pathologist at Kelowna General Hospital (KGH).