Thank f*** for the NHS

Quite apart from the fact that they pay my salary every month that is! Everybody moans about the NHS and behaves as if it is falling apart and a complete disaster but frankly we don't know how lucky we are. Sunday morning I read a post by ld_durham about how rubbish her health insurance had been and she'd had to pay $650 for medicine for her son. At the time I thought how intolerable it must be to have to pay for prescriptions for children so that you could realistically find yourself having to decide whether to feed your child or buy its medicine. The most anybody has to pay for a prescription over here is £6 something. Unless the PCT refuses to fund whatever it is (step forward herceptin). But then just to bring it into sharper focus on Sunday afternoon my son had a massive asthma attack and we have been in hospital with him since. I am having a break while his Dad is with him now that he is much better. I cannot begin to imagine how much worse the whole thing would have been if I'd been worrying about the cost. Though actually as I really thought he might die it couldn't have been a lot worse, thinking about it. But just day to day he has 3 inhalers and epipens to carry around. I have many, many things to be thankful for and one of them is the NHS.