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.

Early rising 4.00am

Toothache woke me up this morning at 4.00am and I lay there in bed trying to find a comfortable place to put myself until five.

I tried covering my head with a duvet to keep the side of my face warm that was trying to thump on out through my cheek. I fluffed up a pillow and lay my puss on it. I even went to the last resort of draping the soft, cotton fabric of my housecoat -- a sure-fire cure for everything insomniac -- across my head without success.

I have three stumps of teeth that need to be uprooted. Two quite happily attack me from time to time but have been soundly whipped through the careful application of antibiotic treatments and horsepills. The third has, until last night, rested rottenly in peace in my upper mandible somewhere beneath my right eye with only an occasionally inconvenient habit of catching a piece of food in its gory depths. Then this weekend came the feast of sugary drinks, wines, spirits, beers, cakes, buns, biscuits, ice creams, syrups, chocolates and puddings that obviously had it throw in the proverbial towel and start throbbing like a good thing.

This evening, though feeling sleep deprived, I am somewhat more comfortable, back as I am on the pills diet and nicely swaddled in codeine.

If I come by money I shall ask the dentist to apply a gallon of stump killer. Until then, I am not looking forward to my bed.