Blogging and the Dentist

It has been a horrible week. Just horrible. I have done nothing much except take painkillers, sleep and do the bare essentials in parish work. And all because of toothache.  Readers may remember Pedro the gorgeous dentist who I had to leave because he was also a crap dentist. Now we have Vicky, the super-efficient dentist, who scares me a little with her efficient manner. She is a woman who likes to be in control and I suspect gumboils shrink in terror at the merest glance from her. A week ago I took my chronic toothache to her (and why is it always just as the weekend is about to begin that the pain levels rise?) and she removed a large troublesome filling which we suspected was the culprit. Sometimes it is hard to tell where the pain is coming from. On different occasions it seemed to be in my ears, eyes, lower jaw, upper jaw and nose. Anyway, taking the filling out seemed to do the trick. Until the injection wore off, that is, and when the dental surgery was closed for the weekend. Turned out, it was the tooth next to it or the one next to it. As my next appointment is not until next week I thought I’d try and persevere hence the week of painkillers and sleep and no work. (Along with that I also got an infected eye and had to get cream for that and a warning that I may be allergic to Lucy Pussy – oh no!)

How on earth did people manage before there were dentists?  Or did they just go and get it pulled if it gave trouble? I hate toothache and not being able to eat hot or cold or sweet – yeh, what’s that all about? How does it know that things are sweet and therefore nippy? Anyway, back to the tooth tale, I eventually went in yesterday and begged for another emergency appointment and the lovely Vicky decided to remove the filling from the next tooth. I must admit I thought it was the next one along but who’s going to argue with her?  Turns out she was right. Of course. (Although her injection didn’t work and I felt that nerve being poked – four times. Ouch.)

So my day off was spent catching up with some of the work I should have done during the week. Sorry if you haven’t been visited when you thought you ought to have been. Today I’m off to a conference on the Benedictine Spirituality of Work. The good thing is that I can eat sweet things.

Toothless Ruthless

Regular readers of this blog will perhaps remember the swooning that has taken place in the dentist’s chair. P was very handsome but it turned out that he was not such a hot dentist. This is a great pity, I can tell you, for he really was delicious.  However last week i found a new NHS dentist in Portobello who is terribly young but super efficient. Yesterday i went for my filling – this being the tooth that has been filled badly by P three times now – and new dentist suggested that I just get that old wisdom tooth out at the same time because its on the same side.  Well I was delighted at the thought – truly. It meant I didn’t have to go back again and it had been giving me gip, growing as it did out the side of my gum into my cheek.  Many numbing injections later, which included half my nose, the filling was done and with a bit of pushing and squelching the offending tooth was out.  Told you she was efficient.  Just as I was about to clamber out of the chair she said, “You do know that you’ve got a bit of root poking through your gum on the other side, don’t you?  Why don’t I just take that out now before it gets infected?”  Absolutely! Let’s get it all done now! (What was in that injection?)  Another two jags and the root was out and I sat up to the accompaniment of a few stars and wooziness.

I was told not to do any work for the rest of the day and to put my feet up with copious painkillers for when the jags wore out.  So I did just that. Finished my book too but more of that later.  Now I’m just hungry, not having eaten anything since yesterday lunch.  Why is breakfast food all scratchy?

Holiday update

Spent an hour in the chair with the lovely Pedro this morning having a little root canal treatment. Nothing better for your holiday enjoyment. Of course, now that he’s done it he reckons it won’t hold so I need a cap or crown. I am rather weary of the whole affair and fed up eating soft food (missing filling on other side too).

So what else have I done with this well-earned holiday?  3 DVDs have been watched while it poured rain outside. They were: Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day (loved the book and love the movie); Doubt (scary Meryl Streep and scary story of nuns and a priest); Quantum of Solace (not short of car/boat/plane/people chases).

I’ve also done a bit of ferrying around of Son #1 and we haven’t been near a Historic Scotland site yet. Next week…

Oh yes, and I gave up smoking. Now on Day 5 and its a breeze. Thank you Champix.

Day off

My day off yesterday began with a little root canal treatment by the gorgeous Pedro. This was painless thanks to the very large syringe of something that was popped in to my gum and then out my ear via my eye socket. However the temporary filling has left a particularly nasty taste in my mouth, only removed temporarily by eating tasty morsels. I fear my diet is not going to go particularly well this week.

Then it was back home to catch up with emails and a little bit of work which needed dealt with.  Not to mention holding things up to be photographed and catalogued on Ebay for Son #1’s latest passion. It has got to the stage that if something isn’t nailed down he could be selling it from under my feet.

Shopping followed – a job I love. Then back home for a little rest. Had just settled down in front of the TV to catch up with everything I’ve missed last week, and was thinking what tasty morsal I might have for dinner, when the phone rang. Didn’t answer it, of course, it being my day off, but did listen in just in case. Thank goodness I did. For it was then that I remembered I should be doing Quiz Night at church in 15 mins.

Quiz Night was great fun though. We mixed up people into different teams which meant folk got to know others. And of course, we thought that this would prevent ‘The Foleys’ from taking 1st prize yet again. That didn’t work as Archie was still on the winning team. Well done Archie!  Even with the 2 disputed answers you’d still have won! Thinking next time we might do a completely religious quiz and see how things go!

Today is sermon-writing day for Family Service and 8.30am gang. Have been invited to Gay Pride march to take photos of a certain priest who is talking on weddings.

Dental question

Why don’t dentists give guarantees with their work?  Recently I had my check up and was told I needed 3 fillings. Fair enough. And they even gave me an estimate for the work (NHS) of £32. When the work was finished I was told the bill was £66. Why the discrepancy? Because I was told the lovely Pedro actually did 6 fillings. “No he didn’t. I was there and there were only 3 fillings.”  But it would seem that on some teeth there was more than one wee filling (back and front) so it was charged extra. Hmm.

Then a week later one of them fell out. Back to dentist yesterday and he said he’d fix it and had found another.  Estimate for £25. So why am I having to pay for a filling that wasn’t put in well enough? Is a week acceptable for the life of a filling?

Of course, the lovely Pedro is so delicious I don’t imagine many will complain.

Holiday from hell

Frankly, my dears, I have just had the worst holiday ever. Forget cancelled flights, lost luggage, lousy weather. These are but nothing compared my holiday just past. The plan, of course, was to go and stay with a friend for a week and then to lounge around in the garden reading books. Of course the arrival of the new boiler put paid to going away the first week but I still was looking forward to a second week of R&R. Let me tell you what really happened and why I don’t want anyone asking if I had a nice break.

3 floods and 3 visits from Dynorod

Washing machine broke in the first flood, was repaired after 4 days, and blew up again within an hour.

Dodgy electricity meant getting a new power box into the house and suggestion that we get a new fuse box.

(This was all in the first week.)

Now for my second week of my holidays…

Boiler still being fitted and tuned in.

Carpet stained so carpet shampooer had to be purchased and used.

Tooth abcess returned with a vengeance which required an emergency wait for the mad dentist who finally agreed to remove the crown there and then. I now know it is best not to do this while you have an abcess in situ. Such severe pain, the likes of which I have never experienced except perhaps in childbirth, and swollen face 5 days later. (And one root still in there languishing perhaps to come back and bite me at a later date.)

New washing machine arrived but was unable to be fitted because the pipes are stuck. Had to wait another 2 days with dirty washing piling up around our ears before Keith, the lovely boiler fitter, came back and did it easily. Oh, but he did find another minor leak behind said washing machine which he will return to mend at a later date.

Gee, am I looking forward to getting back to work. I’m exhausted!

The Lost Week

Well, I did warn you that this story was likely to run and run…

I lost most of this week due to either severe toothache or in an interesting drug haze from rather strong painkillers. I did take a service on Thursday morning but I’m still not convinced that I was actually there. I know I remembered not to consume all of the left-over Blood of Christ. (So many warnings on these antibiotics on what might befall me if I do imbibe.)

I had another trip to the dentist when something erupted on my gum and had a painful scraping and poking procedure. Things have improved considerably but I can still feel the poison meandering around the left side of my head.

But enough of my grumblings. Today is the Iona Pilgrimage reunion so I’m off to drink lemonade and wonder at the Wild Goose.

No communion wine for me then

Woke up with raging toothache this morning. You may remember the saga of the very expensive crown (here) and frankly it has never really been a great success in terms of eating. It may look gorgeous but it traps food like nobody’s business and I have had to become the Queen of Flossing ever since. But today it was more than just the usual ache – this is full blown pain right up to my eye socket.

So, a quick trip to the dentist ensued and I was informed that I have an abcess and that they can’t do root canal treatment on back teeth so I’ll have to go private to the tune of about £400. (You may recall that this is exactly what the blessed crown cost me in the first place.) I have been given extra-strength antibiotics (the ones you can’t drink alcohol with) for 10 days but she is pretty sure it will keep re-occurring. The other alternative is to get the crown taken out and she will have a go at a bit of root prodding which I think is what she said she really couldn’t do.

Great! Now I can’t eat and I can’t afford to get treated. Bummer. So I’m off to a dark room to lie down and moan softly…

First Vestry meeting of the year last night and first Vestry meeting for 2 new members – welcome A & N. For the first portion of the meeting we had Andrew the organist along to talk to his paper on the future of our organ.  It is needing a considerable amount of work doing (about £45,000+ worth over the next year or so) so we are considering all the options. That is: new pipe organ, renew current pipe organ, digital organ.

We had a good discussion with some good questions and now we will go away and think about it all. There is no rush, thankfully, so we don’t have to make the decision immediately. Whilst speaking to our Organ tuners, Forth Pipe Organs, they told me about this document:  Church Heating and the Organ which was really useful. If your church is considering new heating or new organs have a look at it. I wish we’d known about it sooner before our new robust heating dried out all the leather and wooden bits of the organ. We are now going for the heating being on constantly at a low temperature during winter to avoid the sudden surges.

The rest of the meeting went well, even the multitude of AOB questions from our new People’s Warden. By jove, she has been doing her work!

Unbeknownst to the Vestry I spent much of it poking around with my tongue into the new temporary tooth which was put in yesterday morning and I had broken by dinner time. Not to mention mourning the fact that my gorgeous Irish dentist is leaving next week. Boo hoo.

Highs and lows

Mixed emotions on Thursday as a group of hearty Episcopalians gathered in the Synod Office to say goodbye to Barbara, our beloved Child Protection Officer. I did a little waitressing to help out with distributing the fabulous Waitrose canapés which B had provided. Speeches were made, gifts were promised and then some of staggered off to Brown’s for more fizz and food. Bumped into more Piskie clergy so it would seem that Brown’s is the place to be seen in Lent.

B has had a difficult job dealing with a tricky caseload. Not everyone has been nice to her either. But she certainly brought glamour to a seedy side of the Church. And nobody can say she didn’t give 100% to the job – sometimes taking phonecalls late into the night with never a murmur.

On Friday morning – it was at that point that I regretted having quite so much fizz – I had to get to the dentist at 9.25am to have a tooth removed. It was meant to be a 10 minute appointment which turned out to be closer to an hour. It would appear that I really didn’t want to part with that molar. No pain but a lot of pressure and then an infection to deal with.

I was given antibiotics with the strict instructions that I do not drink alcohol. “Not even communion wine?” I asked. “Just the tiniest sip,” I was told. So my servers will have to be on stand-by for the clearing up tomorrow.

I was also told to go home and rest, with no strenuous activity. It was my day off anyway but I did have plans for a rearrangement of my study. That will have to wait. But I did have a helpful chat with Fr K who had stayed the night. The greatest thing about clergy getting together is the sharing of ideas.