Not quite so hot in The View from the Terrace

It has been a little cooler for two days and it finally rained yesterday, the first time in weeks. Today it is heating up again. This summer is heading for the record books. I managed to persuade Hubby to go swimming last Sunday. He actually enjoyed it and said we must do it again. I think it would be good to go now and again. I don’t do much regular exercise. I do enjoy walking but right now it is too hot for that.

We went to a party two weeks ago. It was organised as a fundraiser for a charity that helps farmers in crisis. Hubby’s choir were singing there. It was up in the Black Mountains in a barn and it was lovely there on a summer’s evening, and cooler because it is higher up. We sat with Donald, the 80 year old man whose birthday party we went to last year. He sings in the choir and is also the father of Tony’s boss. He talked a lot about his family who have farmed in the Black Mountains for generations and how his son built a stone business from an old quarry on his farm. He now owns other quarries including one in Cornwall where Prince Charles is a customer. Prince Charles is Duke of Cornwall and owns a lot of property there. He came to the quarry to get matching stone to renovate some of the houses. Donald’s son has also been on a TV programme called Grand Designs. The programme features people building or renovating unusual houses. He renovated a 300 year old derelict cottage that used to belong to his grandparents. It was building this cottage that started his interest in stone and led eventually to his business. The programme is on You Tube.

The saga of the troublesome tooth continues. After my second visit to the dentist in June it again settled down for a day or two and then started to play up again, though not so badly as before. A week yesterday I went back and she gave me antibiotics which she said should settle it. She said they try to avoid them nowadays when possible but it seemed I did need them. Funnily enough, after seeing her the tooth started to feel better, so I thought I would give it a day or two to see if it would settle without them. After 2 days it was no worse but had stopped improving so I thought I’d better take them. I started to feel quite ill after one day. I had a tingling in my legs and felt very lethargic, a bit like you feel when you are going down with the flu. Then the next day the tingling was less but I had this pressure on my chest and in my neck. It only lasted a short time and I have had that with my migraine drugs so I carried on as the tooth was almost right. Then on the third day I felt really ill. The pressure lasted hours and I felt exhausted and there was a spasm of muscle in the back of my neck which kept triggering a migraine. I looked it up on the net but couldn’t find anyone with these side effects. I did find that sometimes this drug is only prescribed for 3 days, so I decided to risk it and stop. To be honest, the side effects were frightening me. Perhaps I should have rung the dentist, but I have been there so much lately I worry about being seen as a nuisance, and whatever she said I wasn’t going to take any more and I was sure she would say in that case see how you go.

That was Wednesday. Thursday I felt fine; the knot in my neck had gone, the pressure had gone. Then yesterday morning I started getting some pain in the tooth again. It was so slight I ignored it, hoping it might settle but it hasn’t. In the evening I was feeling nauseous yet hungry, odd that. The nausea passed after I had eaten something. This morning when I woke it was there again and the same thing happened, it passed when I ate a little breakfast but my stomach is definitely not right. It’s odd as I was warned the antibiotics may upset my stomach but this only happened when I stopped them. Unfortunately it’s now Saturday so I will have to wait over the weekend. I am worrying that the dentist will tell me off for stopping the antibiotics without ringing her. I worry a lot about that sort of thing. I had a lot of bad experiences with my dentist as a child and several other bad experiences with doctors in my teens. I was actually unable to visit a dentist for 11 years which led to losing several back teeth. It’s not the treatment that frightens me, but the dentist and what they will think about me, same with the doctor. So all of this is quite traumatic for me. It is also maddening as Hubby’s choir is performing tonight and I am supposed to be going to support them and they are doing one of my favourite songs from Les Miserables. Then Sunday is our folk club night.

I really am getting fed up with all of this. Several friends have told me they went through something similar and would never have another root canal. One friend said hers didn’t settle for months, I really needed to hear that! I will ring the dentist on Monday. She must be getting sick of seeing me. I am certainly sick of going. The only good thing is that the building is air conditioned and I get an hour’s relief from the daytime heat! I hope she can prescribe an alternative antibiotic. It’s getting difficult as I also can’t take penicillin. There is another very traumatic experience behind that!

Right now I am hoping I can last till Monday and not have to go to an emergency dentist. My own dentist doesn’t see NHS patients out of hours, so that would mean seeing a total stranger at a different surgery. I really don’t wan’t to do that. The pain isn’t too bad but I am still feeling shaky and a bit weak and I have a slight pressure in my neck again. I really hope that doesn’t mean that it wasn’t the antibiotics causing that earlier. I have had it a little from the heat before but never as bad as on Wednesday.

With all of what has been happening I haven’t done any duties at my voluntary job since early April. I planned a few weeks off in late April and early May but was due to go back in June when I arranged a duty and had to cancel at short notice because of a bad migraine. Since then I have been having this tooth problem and am afraid to arrange another duty as I don’t want to have to cancel again. I wish things could just go back to normal.