It's D-Day...!

...where the "D" stands for "Dentist". Or "Dread." Or "Drew out three of my feckin' teeth."

Yep, 12.30pm today yer man will be prying out three broken teeth and ending this prolonged and recurring illness I've laboured under (or not laboured under, being out of work for nearly six weeks now).

Wish me luck.

I may be some time.

Ooh-er, missus....!

Spitting bullets or dodging them?

As folk have been wondering, I shall tell you that someone rang the dentist's doorbell and ran away, leaving me tied to a red coloured sack truck on the doorstep unable to reach my tin of patented dentist repellant.

The receptionist was very nice and gave me only two forms to fill in.

The dental nurse was like all dental nurses I have ever met at their work, which is to say incapable of saying anything other than the patient's name and otherwise remaining professionally silent throughout the consultation.

The dentist, whom I was pleased to see was past puberty, but not yet at my own age, was a gem among tooth-pullers. He listened to the list of my various ailments then lifted the hood and called out a string of chess moves to the nurse who scribbled them down on my shiny new chart. He then stuck my head in a slow but determined x-ray machine and when all had been revealed he booked me in for a Friday treatment whereat I shall be dental intacto coming in, but three teeth the less coming out.

And that was it. I have still got the ticking time-bombs that are the remnants of my dental abcesses and I am still absent from work on sick leave. On the plus side, the dentist ("my dentist", I must start calling him!), recommends salty water gargling as an aid to infection avoidance, and I am still absent from work on sick leave.

The Friday in question is the 25th July. I have fourteen and a half days of not getting a huge relapse to work on.

Countdown to dentistry...

It's gloomy in Dublin this evening. More like a November afternoon than a June evening. Rain has been coming down in meteoric showers all day and I had to let the gazebo down as there was no way it was going to survive intact against the sudden violent gusts that puffed it up to hover an inch off the ground.

I'm at home recovering from another attack of the dental abcesses. Two of the resident trio came on me together, skirmishing with me on Friday and Saturday; opening up the main battle late on Saturday night. I think this time I was about 30 minutes from sending for an ambulance, the infection was so severe. I had a fever of a million and a bit and the whole room was jumping with the uncontrollable shakes I suffered. Herself was at a loss, because I was well-supplied with horsepills, water, painkillers, the lot. But the waves kept coming. I finally managed to get some internal heat back into the bod on Saturday night / Sunday morning as the worst of the attack eased. It was fever and pain and discomfort since then for much of Monday, until it all broke in the wee hours of Tuesday morning and I woke refreshed but exhausted.

The appointment with the dentist isn't until Tuesday, 7th July, at 10.45 am.

You wouldn't want to have something seriously wrong with you, would you?

A neighbour gave me a phone number of her dentist this afternoon. I may phone them tomorrow and see if I can't get an earlier slot. These three buckos have to go. Or, next time, I will.

Home baking

"Have you ever eaten one of my sponge cakes?" Herself asks me, the other evening, as we are watching television.
"Nope," I say, swigging my beer.
"Didn't you know me when I used to bake sponge cakes and butterfly buns and flans and maringues?"
"Er... no."
"I shall make us a sponge cake at the weekend."

Come the weekend there was a crisis of ounces verses grams. I was entertaining my father in the other room and so I couldn't help much.

"Look it up on the Internet," I said.

An hour later I was eating.... something.... sponge-like....

"Do you like it?"
"Er... yes...."

I chewed at the lump of fruit-topped, cream-filled yellowish stuff. Having to chew or gnaw at a sponge cake is probably an indication that it hasn't come out right.

"I think I didn't get the measurements right," she said. "And I think there was something about folding the mixture rather than beating it."

I seprated my upper teeth from my lower ones with an effort, long enough to say:

"No, babe. It's fine, really."

There was a definite clunk when a piece of leftover spong hit the bottom of the kitchen bin. I could feel strange protestations starting up in my gut.

Herself Googled for sponge cake recipes.

"I know what went wrong!" she shouted in to the other room. "I'll make you a proper one tomorrow!"

So, today, I'm eating a wafer-thin sponge-cake that hasn't turned out either. But it is lighter than yesterday's.

"I know where I went wrong. I'll make another one tomorrow that will be right this time. I promise."

My gut is thanking Heaven that we're back at work on Tuesday. It might not have survived an extra day of sponge making.

"You can write about it," Herself said. "On condition you write a sequel when it turns out...."

Watch this space.

My turn to get the dread Lurgy, or its cousin

Was quite happy to get back to the day job yesterday, until, as it wore on the pressure in my lower jawbone and around my left eye hinted at the return of a seasonal tooth-and-synus problem. Possibly the notion of being in the office led to some involuntary jaw clenching, but as I went through the emails that had accumulated over my prolonged Christmas holiday, I was comfortable enough with what I found there. My colleagues had looked after my mails and the procedures necessary to keep work moving forward admirably.

"Do you suffer with synus?" my boss said when I complained in passing that I was starting to feel bunged up. "Have you any Sinutab? People who suffer with synus swear by Sinutab."

"Well, I have some problems with my teeth that are adding to it," I replied. "Possibly the start of an abcess."

That was enough.

"There's nothing worse than an abcess. You know, the only solution I could find to one was to hold my head under a cold tap for hours at a time?"

I nodded. My boss is prone to migraine, sweet tooth, and other maladies as a result of stress the same as I am. His solutions and stories are always entertaining though.

"I went to the doctor," he said, "And he gave me an injection for the pain. Well, Jesus Christ! I don't know what the drug was, but if someone had two of them you'd have a serious drugs problem in a minute!

"You see that building over there? Well I got home and I was as high as it! Floating!"

He then proceeded to tell me how the dentist had to drill his tooth (without an injection, which, he said, might help spread infection. I didn't quite see that logic, but however.) to relieve the abcess. I was glad I'd already had my dinner.

I got home last night and the pain started up properly. I had a night of half hours -- half an hour covering my face with a blanket. Half an hour sitting on the side of the bed. Half an hour holding my head up. Half an hour lying down. Each new movement relieved some problem or caused another one.

So, no work today. Antibiotics, pain killers, lots of fluids instead. I hope to get back to the office tomorrow.

How Saturday morning people with broken teeth eat cornflakes

Saturday mornings and I parted company some time in my teens and early twenties when their only purpose was to give me an opportunity to stay in bed until someone put on a frying pan and lured me out of the scratcher.

Now I find I appreciate them again, since I got some of my own life back. In fact, I've swung to the other extreme and find I can't stay in bed on Saturday morning. My head gets filled up with a week's worth of corporate crap and office politics that clenches the muscles of my lower back into a biological alarmclock. This morning I was sitting in front of this thing around 8.00am, for example.

It confused the hell out of me to hear the front door opening at 8.30am. Brig arriving back with the week's grocery shopping. I was up so early that I wasn't expecting to see her until after her half-day's work ended at 12.30pm. So I tripped on out in carpet slippers and piled in bags of cat litter and potatoes into the kitchen, then sent her on her way to make money for me to buy beer. I'm good and white trash and proud. Even down to the teeth.

It isn't that I didn't try to get the dentist to yank out the broken ones. He just didn't see the value in staying put in one place long enough to do the job. Anyway, he looked about 12 years old.

I made three appointments and was seen once. After that I said 'Fuck it' and kept taking the Neuorfen until the most awkward part finally fell out of its own accord. So now I'm eating cornflakes like a dog tossing back a particularly noisesome piece of offal before the universe knows he's found it. Head back and using up the unbroken teeth as best I can.

My first appintment the child genius told me I could have root-canal treatment for €700 a tooth or have the two most troublesome ones yanked for €200. What's a skinflint to do? So I dutifully paid €250 for this news and arrived the following week to notice first of all that his tricycle wasn't padlocked to the gate as it had been on my first visit and that no lights were on inside the surgery. I took the fact that no-one answered the doorbell, the pounding on the door, or the screaming through the letterbox as a sign that perhaps nobody was in. The itsy-bitsy-ditsy receptionist had forgotten to phone me to cancel my appointment, it transpired. Old Short-Pants and Pimples had a meeting of his own someplace else.

So... The next day, holding my temper and ignoring the throb in my left eye (I have very long dental roots), I phoned and politely asked if perhaps they might crayon me in for another date with the pliers. When my mobile tinkled a few days later to cancel this appointment, I decided their hearts really weren't in it.

In any case, a cup of hot soup followed by an ice-cream did more to quarry the offending gnasher than the boyish man could have done with his three days of training under his belt.

So I have sharks teeth in places. But hey! I'm happy. Can't you tell I'm happy?