Good evening, one and all. I'm home again, and fully intending to remain here for a while.

I managed to develop toothache while I was away (horrid - far too near the brain)and managed to get dental appt this afternoon. It's the tooth I was meant to have had out months ago, but I got sidetracked and it stopped hurting - till yesterday, but I treated myself to some codeine to have at night so I currently don't give a shit about that.

I've also got antibiotics that I'm meant to be taking at eight hour intervals so I had one at five and the next is at one am, and we'll see where we go from there. I didn't really listen when the dentist told me what it all was about, just what I had to do.

Tomorrow's photo prompt is 'something good' and mine is going to be NHS related. OK, I can't have the necessary tooth extraction for two weeks, because they've had their funding endlessly chipped away at, but if it gets proper painful I can go back and be fitted in, like I was today. Tomorrow I'm having blood tests because my doctor can see that I'm not really buying her line that she'd expect me to be this knackered (the amount I was before I did all this daughter-care), and anxiety about possible underlying health problems is adding to my already plentiful store of sources of anxiety, so let's run some tests, just to be sure. Again, I've had to wait a week for the tests, but if I'd fetched up with something the doc suspected was a melanoma, she'd have rung the hospital and told them to expect me. It works.

I don't know how you Americans put up with the level of anxiety around health insurance you (most of the ones I know, anyway) have to live with. In fact, the ones that have good coverage either praise that to the heavens or are stuck in some job they hate because of the health insurance and you still have this co-pay malarkey which I don't understand at all. The only thing I pay for in all this is the pain-killers, which I can afford as they're only a couple of quid for the few that I need. Everything else is free - up to and including some kind of false tooth if necessary. Not a glamorous false tooth - I already have a shiny metal molar on the other side of my jaw.

It's bad enough being ill - they can't take our health service away. Anything else seems fucking insane to me.


Going to bed now

Grateful for: Easy drive home (four, yes four, motorways drives without stopping once!); peaceful evening; YD chilled out; good session with MS counsellor; panna cotta for pud

Sweet dreams and hope you are all well - have fallen behind in my reading xxx