aaarrgghhhh!
Quite a nasty session. Had to lose the lower left molar that had the bone abcess, and have my bridge repaired. Trouble is,I seem to have re-acquired my insensitivity to local anaesthetic. So while that was cutting in, my bridge got taken out (revealing another problem - maybe why it keeps loosening) and new cement put on the steel rods. But this is only a temporary fix: some time in the next few months, I get to have either end of the bridge removed, and a plate instead. Not happy about this: I had a plate from age seven to my early twenties, and they've a nasty habit of breaking on food, but it seems you can't really have a 5-tooth bridge.

By the time we'd finished talking about all that, the second batch of lignocaine had cut in (or so we thought at the time, anyway). And bone abcess or not, the offending tooth was incredibly well rooted. I should not have needed to pull my head and jaw one way with both hands while the dentist pulled the pliers the other.

That didn't work, so out came the drill again to chop the tooth up. This made it possible to remove most of the top half in stages, but getting at the roots was tricky (and somewhat sore).

So here I am, with a rather sore mouth, and absolutely starving: I can't eat, really, 'cos of the blood clot that mustn't be disturbed, and my antibiotics are disrecommended on an empty stomach. Oh, and no alcohol (fair enough - it'd probably mix badly with the ibuprofen/codeine sweeties), smoking (fell off wagon with that on Friday and Saturday, but wouldn't have been, anyway), hot drinks, cold drinks, chewy food, sticky food, sharp food....

If all goes true to form, there'll be damn' all sleep tonight and rather a lot of discomfort for the next few days.

On the bright side, I am so glad I didn't have the tooth out the Thursday before Beltane.