I'll Never Floss

I handed in my prescription this morning as I need to get a 6 month supply of my pills for my upcoming trip to America. I took the opportunity to ask for the results of my cholesterol blood test from last Thursday and so the receptionist looked it up.

"Everything was ok" she said "nothing to worry about at all".

I've come to expect this response over the years so didn't bat an eyelid. For many people, that might be enough but I take great interest in every detail of my 'condition' and so I asked if I could have the cholesterol results. After a long search through my file, she finally asked me something but it was mostly drowned out by the piped music, the sound from the tv and the collective noises from the other patients around me in the waiting area.

Is it me getting older or have waiting room levels of noise become worse recently ? The moans and groans, coughs and hacks are all part of the general hubbub that we expect in a doctor's waiting room - but now we have music from huge wall mounted speakers attached to a £5 radio somewhere under the desk next to the receptionist's handbag. The radio is usually tuned slightly off the station so you get more hiss than music and Terry Wogan's dulcet tones sound like he's permanently attached to a helium canister.

My surgery now has a small flat screen tv up on the wall and although the volume is usually muted so we can enjoy the ramblings and general blarney of Terry 'Soprano' Wogan on the radio, someone had decided this morning that they needed to hear Phillip Schofield as well as see him and so the two were competing for our aural attention.

I was so glad that I was just passing through, so to speak, and was not ill in any way. All that noise could well have pushed me over the edge. As it was, I didn't hear all of what the receptionist was saying to me so I've no idea if she was giving me my overall cholesterol figure or the ratio figure - which are very different. Hopefully it wasn't how many years they'd given me to live !!

In any case I did hear her say 3.8 (146 in US cholesterol terminology) and I was happy enough to take that and run. I'll ask for more details when I see the nurse on Thursday but considering I put on a few pounds over the summer and not done as much walking as last year, I'll take 3.8 and say thank you very much.

I then headed off for my first visit with fellow blogger, Daphne, who lives nearby and what a lovely lady she is. I met her daughter, Emily and as a bonus, their cute cat - who took an instant liking to me and only bit me once - a friendly nip just to let me know who was boss. I had tea and jaffa cakes and we spent a delightful 90 minutes chatting and getting to know each other. That's Daphne and not the cat I mean.

I hope to be invited again.

I came home as it was time to chat online with Debby as she and Dennis, my US friends, set off yesterday for the drive from their home in Michigan down to our shared winter 'home' in Sebring, Florida. They had driven 342 of the 1,398 miles and were staying overnight near the town of Piqua, OH. The idea is to enjoy the trip as there is no rush to get to Florida. They plan to get there by Thursday evening, leaving almost a week to get the place ship shape by the time I arrive on 3rd October. I can't wait.

Sadly before that, I have my checkup with the dentist tomorrow. I never used to dread such visits as my dentist was a saint in a white coat with the gentle touch of a butterfly. HE would clean my teeth and I never felt a thing. Last year he retired and the new dentist has passed such mundane cleaning tasks to the 'hygienist from hell' who got her training at the Josef Mengele Clinic in Bolivia. At least she apologises beforehand for the pain she is about to inflict on me, but I have to say it's scant consolation. She does her best to open up the gaps between my teeth and I spend the following 6 months filling the gaps in again. It's what David Attenborough would call a symbiotic relationship but somehow I think I'm getting the worst of the deal. I seem to be the remora to her shark.

I may need several jaffa cakes to get over it. Are you listening, Daphne ??