I started reading this thread last night, had a tantrum when the battery went on my son's tablet, finished your story this morning, left lurkdom behind me and joined up to Mumsnet so that I could board the bus (I'm in East Anglia so not far to travel)
Your story is awe inspiring, thank you so much for sharing it. As I am late to the party, I'm kind of going over old ground here, but I just wanted to say how much I related to your loss of friends posts. Twenty years ago, I had a social life, but then my third child had serious health problems, our income took a drastic drop following my husband's redundancy/heart attack and I became if not Molly no mates, then Molly low mates!
I had to laugh when I read about your tortoise - I was a kid who loved animals and begged for pets, finally my parents gave in and got me a tortoise, it lasted a week as it was apparently a mountaineering racing tortoise....the first time I caught it scaling the wire fence between us and the neighbouring garden, my parents told me that no way could it make it over the fence, but it obviously did as by the end of the week it had legged it, I had the tortoise that ran away......of course maybe it did a monster tortoise pooh and my mother helped it over the fence, she did have form as I was given stick insects by a school friend which she released into the garden as she found them horrible to look at.......
Enough rambling, I'm hoping and praying that your pain levels come down today, thank you for dragging me out of Mumsnet lurkdom!
I