Today is something of a milestone, compared with recent events. I leaped out of bed - well hardly leaped, more like gingerly emerged - and proceeded to prepare for my morning shower. Alright, so that's no big deal, but the strapping was going to come off my toes, and they would soon be breathing pure, clean air. (The farmers aren't muck-spreading at the moment in our area.) The psychological effect of returning to something resembling normality is a great morale booster. What is more, this is the first day on which I am free of antibiotic eye drops. I have become accustomed to these, and am wondering whether I will experience withdrawal symptoms. My eyes are still a bit scratchy, but no doubt a solution ('scuse the pun)for that will be found soon enough.
So you see, everything is working out fine. Even my visit to the dentist for emergency treatment yesterday, turned out alright in the end. Ah! You didn't know about that did you? About three weeks ago, one of my fillings broke. A quick call to 'la dentiste', bless her, revealed the bothersome fact that she had no vacancies for three weeks. So for that period I have been carefully guiding the tooth through the many, and dangerous, potentially damaging situations in which it might find itself. There has been no pain at all, so that helped. So yesterday, I took up my trusty crutch/walking-sticks and set off for the dentist.
Now some months ago, having experienced some pain under one of my lower crowns, the dentist lady removed the wrong crown. I don't know how it happened, but there you are, it did. Well I don't hold grudges, and she is a lovely lady who doesn't stint on the time and effort she puts in on one's treatment. So I have in all magnanimity, forgiven her. Nice, yes? So apart from what I must now laughingly call 'emergency treatment', I suggested she might like to check the crowns now rather than wait until two months time, the original checking date. I hope you're still with me. Well in two months, give or take, it is the wedding anniversary of dear Lucy and myself, and the very last thing I would want is a dental restriction on my ability to enjoy a thoroughly good meal, at some lovely restaurant, at a lovely venue far from home. That's the plan, anyway.
So let us return to the dentist's surgery. I laid me down on the couch, and she began her probing examination. It felt a little tinglesome, but nothing to worry about just yet. She probed further and further. Now there is a limit to how far one can crawl, on one's back, before falling off the couch beyond one's head. At that moment, I realised that I had been prodded, probed, spiked, broken and otherwise invaded rather too much of late, and it was all becoming rather tedious. Anyway, the dentist halted and said she would give me an anaesthetic. Oh joy! Another needle! Still, it was better than the alternative.
In went the needle into my top gum, fairly painlessly I have to admit. Then mere moments later, she asked if the anaesthetic had taken effect. To be candid, I didn't really know. I didn't feel that odd, itchy, flaccid numbness that I usually feel at these times, so I said that I wasn't certain. "Never mind," she said (in French), smiling and picking up a drill, "we'll soon find out, won't we?"
After she had chased me round the surgery for two or three laps, and I found myself trapped between her female assistant and a vast array of instruments which I could not comfortably negotiate, I finally submitted. Well there is a limit to how quickly one can run around a dental surgery on crutches. In any case, Lucy was still sitting quietly and not attempting to come to my rescue. Had she been sitting and knitting, with a waiting basket in front of the couch, I might have been more worried. (An allusion to a bit of French history there!) It was at that moment that I came out of my daydream, and observed that, indeed, the anaesthetic was working. The tooth was filled, and an appointment made for the next visit. Yes, I still have the future of my crowns to sort out. Then off we drove for home.
All these happenings have not blinded me to the fact that I have run into a kind of psycho-spiritual cul-de-sac. Much as I want to write, I am finding that very soon I will be struggling to find anything appropriate to write about. It must be well known what my prime interest is in life, yet more and more it is becoming something that I find less and less able to share. So where I go from here, I do not know. One thing is for sure, I will continue to read your blogs with interest, and comment when I have something to say. Now, I can only wait, and patience is a virtue that I find so difficult to cultivate.
