traumatised

To say I am traumatised about yesterday’s dental appointment is probably an understatement. It involved blood, pain, me sobbing my eyes out (and I don’t cry that often – crying in public, except at my children’s nativity play, is almost unheard of), and a discussion about whether I fall into the (apparently much narrowed) criteria to have an extraction done under sedation. I feel a bit of a wuss but, as the lovely receptionist said, I’ve been in pain since Friday and it’s affected my sleep so my pain threshold will be lowered; plus I have an infection in my tooth, and that means it can’t be numbed fully so of course it was going to hurt too much to take it out right then. Especially as it’s a back tooth.

‘A bit uncomfortable’ is what I was offered; the kind of pain level I got was considerably more than that. (Yes, it DOES beg the question why we didn’t get rid of the infection first so we could numb the thing properly, but I was being brave. No, not brave: stupid. Because I was too tired to think straight and work it out for myself: it was not the right thing to do.) I’m going back in 12 days to see my own dentist, and the suggestion is that we do the extraction then… but right now I can only face doing this under sedation. My lovely best friend has offered to come up and hold my hand (or look after the kids so DH can hold my hand). It’s incredibly wussy of me and I should probably be ashamed of myself, but I spent a lot of yesterday in tears, with the taste of blood in my mouth (ick, ick, ick – I could so NOT be a vampire) and my mouth hurting. Am now on antibiotics and back on the dihydrocodeine. (I talked to the pharmacist at my GP’s surgery about what’s the best stuff, and he’s given me the green light to keep on it, as long as I stay within limits.) Though it's not actually getting rid of the pain: just dulling it to bearable levels.

OK. Time for glass half full stuff. Something nice must’ve happened yesterday. Ah yes, got a brilliant new book for research (Sprigings and Chambers: Acute Medicine) and a copy of Kate Harrison’s The Self-Preservation Society. And I managed to read a bit more of CJ Sansom’s Sovereign in the dentist’s waiting room. Had a lovely review from Cataromance for Giovanni (will post that later) and a nice note from the features ed of my local paper about my Disasters book. And something to look forward to today: next lot of winners, and my next guest, who’s absolutely lovely. See next post…