Difficult two weeks with enjoyable interludes in The View from the Terrace

These last 2 weeks things have been difficult for me healthwise. Partly because of that and partly because we have had a lot of other things going on I haven’t been here very much and have got behind with reading and noting. I promise I will try to catch up with all of my friends in the next few days. On the Friday after my birthday my tooth started playing up again. This is the same tooth I had the trouble with last year and again in March. My dentist had referred me to a specialist and I was still waiting for the appointment in 2 weeks time. It hadn’t been too bad until then, just tender if I tapped it, but on that day it began to get more tender. I was particularly worried because it was a bank holiday weekend and my own dentist wouldn’t be available until Tuesday.

On the Saturday I woke with a bad migraine which felt a little different than usual. I was feeling a bit faint, but maybe that was just the pain, and also sometimes rather hot, but it was a very hot day. Hubby was out at his art exhibition. That was on all over the weekend. The next village to ours was holding another arts festival and his art group were part of it. I got some breakfast and took it back to bed. After a while I did begin to feel better. It was difficult to tell if my tooth was extra sensitive because of the migraine, or if the tooth was worse and that had triggered the migraine. I think it was a little of both. Hubby had arranged to ring me after lunch to see if I was feeling well enough to look around the art and craft exhibitions and I was feeling a lot better so that was how we spent the rest of the afternoon. There was a scarecrow competition again so there were scarecrows all over the village and with very original themes.

We had planned to go to a local steam rally on either Sunday or Monday but on Sunday I woke with a really bad migraine. I do get particularly bad ones every few months so I still wasn’t sure if this was still my normal pattern or if the tooth was triggering it. I did get better during the day but the migraine didn’t completely go and the side effects from the meds were especially bad so I stayed home and Hubby went back to his art exhibition. I was delighted to find that 2 of my favourite musicals were on TV, Les Miserables and Mamma Mia. That cheered me up a bit, though it sounds rather strange to say that Les Miserables cheered me up! On the other hand I have always seen it as a triumph of the human spirit over adversity, perhaps that was a message I needed, and I do love the music. Mamma Mia certainly cheered me up.

I did manage to get to the steam rally on the Monday. I had woken again with a migraine but the meds worked well and I didn’t get too many side effects. It was enjoyable afternoon in spite of an absolute downpour at around 4pm. Fortunately we were in the craft tent at that time. This steam engine seems to have come a very long way!

I love the classic cars, remember these?

This one comes every year but I never tire of seeing it.

Can can girls

By Wednesday I was still getting daily migraines and the tooth was the same so I rang the dentist’s for an emergency appointment. She gave me antibiotics and said they would calm down the infection for a while so that I could wait for my appointment with the specialist. They made me ill. They gave me diarrhea and also seemed to trigger the breathing problems I had last year. By the time I had taken 3 of them I knew I couldn’t continue and rang the dentist’s. The receptionist rang me back and said the dentist couldn’t prescribe a different antibiotic as I had already had a bad reaction to another one last year. She said I was to see my GP who could prescribe something else.

By then it was afternoon. I rang the doctor’s and was told I needed to ring the next morning at 8 am for an emergency appointment. I was getting worried because we had planned to go away the next day. Our friends in Coventry were putting on a concert on the Saturday afternoon and we were going to travel up the day before and stay overnight. The hotel was booked and payed for.

The next morning I rang the doctor’s and explained my situation and an appointment was arranged for 10 am. The receptionist rang back an hour later to tell me that the doctor had said she couldn’t treat me for a dental problem. I then spent about 20 minutes backwards and forwards between the dentist’s and the doctor’s. Eventually the doctor’s said if the dentist put the whole thing in writing including what she had prescribed and my reactions and fax it to them she could give me something. This the dentist agreed to do.

We were still hoping to go away so we got everything ready that we would need to take and then had lunch. I rang the doctor’s who said they had received the fax and to call back after 3 o’clock. We were wondering if would ever be able to set off on our journey. 3 o’clock came and I called back. A receptionist answered who knew nothing about my situation and we went through the whole can’t treat you for dental problems thing again. I explained about the fax, she eventually found it and said she would call me back in a few minutes. I waited and waited. Three quarters of an hour later the dentist’s receptionist called and said the doctor had rung them and wanted her to tell them what to prescribe. She had decided she may as well prescribe herself and could I be there for 4.30? We grabbed the things for our trip, quickly made coffee for the journey and dashed to Hereford.

The dentist gave me a different kind of antibiotic and said to keep my fingers crossed that this one didn’t upset me. They had also managed to ring the specialist and bring my appointment forward to the following Tuesday so I only had 4 days to wait. Then we set off for Coventry. Since we were in Hereford, 12 miles north of where we usually set off from we considered going a slightly different route missing the M 50 and joining the M 5 further north at Worcester, but after consideration we decided against as it was now rush hour and there might be a lot of traffic at Worcester, so we drove down to Ross on Wye to follow our usual route.

Just before the M 50 at Ross there is a traffic island.. As we approached our exit we saw a big sign - M 50 eastbound closed. We couldn’t believe it, for me it was the last straw. We pulled into a garage to think and decide what to do. Neither of us felt we could face driving back to Hereford and taking the Worcester route. We knew it would involve heavy traffic, even heavier than normal. I was still not feeling well and another migraine was developing. Hubby was tired from all that had happened, so we decided regretfully to miss the concert and go home. Something made me say to Hubby let’s just go round the roundabout again to be sure we didn’t read it wrong. We hadn’t read it wrong but we had missed the last line -
M50 eastbound closed
8pm-6am
Hubby said, ‘Shall we go then?’
I said, ‘Yes.’ and off we went.

Strangely my tooth had started to improve so I decided not to risk taking the antibiotics for now in case they made me ill again. We reached our hotel and Hubby went for a well deserved drink in the bar while I went to bed with a migraine pill and watched Gardener’s World on the TV. As my tooth was still niggling I took an antibiotic as, if it did upset me I hadn’t got to go anywhere until mid morning tomorrow. I woke in the middle of the night with my breathing problem again. It was not too bad and I wasn’t sure if it was simply that the room was very hot. I opened the window and read for a bit and then fell back to sleep.

The next day I felt better and decided to leave the antibiotics alone for now. Having the morning to fill, we set off for a nearby village, Hampton in Arden, where I have connections on my family tree. Hubby jokes that everywhere we go I seem to have family tree connections which does seem to be true as my ancestors and their descendants are from all parts of the Midlands and I have traced several thousand of them. I had pictured Hampton in Arden as a pretty little black and white village, which it was once, but it has morphed into a suburb of Solihull. At the centre there was a lovely little church and an old pub. We were ready for a coffee and made for the latter. The landlord said they didn’t open until 12 0’clock but somehow Hubby persuaded them to do coffee for us. Then we went across to look at the church.

The churchyard was beautiful, full of rhododendron bushes and confetti from a morning wedding. We wandered around looking at the gravestones when suddenly I came across the grave of someone on my family tree, John Middleton Cattell. He was my great great grandmother’s second cousin, quite a distant connection but still interesting. After we got home I found my 8x great grandparents married in that church!
Hampton in Arden churchyard

The pub said they were not doing lunches that day because it was half term and everyone had disappeared! so we found another one in another village and afterwards enjoyed a wonderful afternoon at the concert with our friends. We drove home in the evening and, because my tooth was feeling a lot better and I only had 3 days till my appointment I didn’t take any more antibiotics.

Monday was Tony’s birthday but we now wouldn’t be there as we had booked to stay near Evesham the night before my appointment to be sure I would make it, so we celebrated on Sunday. We bought him a bonsai tree. He has recently got into bonsai and tried to grow his own from what he thought was an oak cutting but turned out to be a hawthorn. We bought him a miniature Chinese elm and he loved it.

Monday afternoon we set off for Evesham, well Alcester which is 10 miles from Evesham where we found a good deal at the Travelodge. Unbelievably I have another possible ancestral connection to Alcester so we spent the evening looking round the lovely little medieval town and a tiny village a mile north of it where a couple who may well have been my 6 times great grandparents married. I haven’t verified that they are my ancestors but my 4x great grandfather was Nicholas Haines Cattell and I think these are his grandparents as they were William Cattell and Ann Haines and lived only a few miles from where he was born. Also Nicholas was a maltster and the Haines family were also maltsters from Alcester, love that it sounds like a limerick.

My appointment went OK. The specialist said he couldn’t see a reason why the 2 previous root fillings had failed. He couldn’t guarantee this one would work. I certainly hope it does as the whole procedure will cost over £600. My headaches started to improve right away and I didn’t needed a migraine med until last night, 3 and a half days since the last one. The tooth felt worse the next day but the pain in my neck which had been triggering migraines was gone. Since then it is slightly better each day so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I have been relaxing, watching the programmes about D Day and the trooping of the colour and planting some of the dozens of plants that have been waiting, and writing this which has taken me about 3 days!.

Last updated June 10, 2019