Adding my ditto to your post as i missed the oreigional..sorry trink...

KROM

One day I swear I'm going to get hold of a doctor, hack his leg off
with an axe and say "I could have done something about that, but it;s
too late now"

Got the call this morning, she died.

Thanks all for the condolences.

It was all a bit sudden at the end. She came to see us less than a
week ago, her sister wanted to buy a new birdtable and there's a
neighbour makes them, so she came over and brought her with..

She wasn't feeling up to getting out of the car (food poisoning which
may have been the last straw/triggering factor) so I stood out in the
yard and we had a long chat.

I HOPE we made her realise how important she was to us (if you know
someone like that make damn sure you tell them, K?)

When I was little she used to babysit and take me out from time to
time. (She couldn't have children of her own). She was very with it
(ask your parents or granparents what that means) and back in the
sixties she had a Triumph Spitfire.

She is responsible for our living here. She married a man from just
down the road, and back in the sixties they bought a little pink
cottage in a nearby village and did it up. Originally you crapped in a
bucket and buried it in the garden, and when you used the sink or bath
the water ran into a bucket (different bucket!) and was spread on the
garden or poured down the drain in the road. Also it had a cross
between a ladder and stairs to go upstairs.

They used the cottage for holidays and visitng here, and also working
as her husband was a lawyer (and later a judge) and used to work
hereabouts some of the time, and when they weren't using it they let
us and other people stay there.

In later years they moved to a village just down the road to retire.

After my divorce (my old man had died by then) I went back to stay
with my mother temporarily and started trying to convince her to move.

It was only after we'd visited this aunt and her husband and sister
and mother had seen how easily they'd settled in that she seriously
began to consider the idea.

And let me sell her house and buy this one.

It was also due to her genealogical research that I discovered the
somewhat freaky incidence of diabetes and metabolic
syndrome/cardiovascular stuff in her side of the family, which is what
has led to my being here.

So throughout my entire life she has influenced me in thoroughly
beneficial ways.

She was never really herself since her husband died (they were married
over sixty years, the last twenty he was in a chair due to a
horseriding accident, and devoted to one another) and just like him
she had a good death after a happy life.

So apart from the shock, well it could have been worse . . .she
avoided the degradation and suffering which seem to be so common
nowadays.

<snif>

It wasn't so much a missed diagnosis but a "we don't want to spend the
money treating you"

Perhaps I should amend my previous comment, I should hack off the leg
of the accountant who runs the doctors . . .