FRIDAY AFTERNOON:
As I write this (pants!), I am the not-so-proud owner of a very painful tooth, as I sit in the waiting room of my (arse!) dentist’s surgery trying to second guess the fate of my (crikey me!) gnashers… In my expert (balls!) professional opinion, I think – abscess… and from what a friend was telling me – root (yowsers!) canal work… Oh joy.
I’m in pain, by the way, proper full-on pain, so sorry for the uncharacteristic obscenities littered amongst this (crappity-crap!) post. It is really a means of distraction for me right now.
SUNDAY MORNING (5am):
I obviously didn’t get to finish my post on friday. I got called through… but I thought I’d leave it in this post.
Well I was half right… After some prodding, a bit more pain, questions and an x-ray, it was confirmed that it is indeed an abscess but due to the size, positioning, and likely success (or not) of root canal work, I’ve been told i could still go for root canal work, but I’ve been advised towards extraction. Suits me! ‘Get rid as soon as possible’ I said. And I was given a prescription for antibiotics and advised to get some stronger painkillers.
It’s a lower-right molar so I don’t mind a gap there and I certainly don’t want this thing coming back. It is more painful than running mile 23 of the London Marathon in 2005 when I was undertrained, overweight, and very unfit… and that was painful!… 5.5 hours it took me that year :-S !
Anyway… this appointment had been with a new dentist as my regular one at the practice is on his holidays, but in booking back with my regular one for the extraction, it will be 3 weeks, oh except I’m on my holiday then so we make it a week later.
… As I walked down the road to the pharmacy for my antibiotics, the effects of all the prodding and biting down on x-ray plates started to cause me to pause to collect myself together a number of times before continuing. However, when the lady behind the counter told me it would be a 15 min wait AND, as she didn’t have a working til, I would have to now join the back of the regular shop queue which was now 5 people long… THAT’S when it began to hit me in a big way…. The combination of the pain, the two nights of very poor sleep and the prospect of it continuing for another month, meant that by the time I got to the front of the queue, I was in danger of making a real public idiot of myself!
… have you ever been in a fight? Not necessarily recently, but ever? You know how you’re all pumped-up and ready for whatever comes at you, to give as good as you get, and all that macho stuff… Well I don’t know what it’s like as an adult because I’ve not been in a ‘grown-up fight’ (oxymoron??) but I have as a child, and once the fight had stopped, regardless of the outcome and the presence or absence of injury, I felt an uncontrollable urge to burst into tears, even though that is a very bad thing to do when you’re at school…
I think I looked something like this
…Well it was like that now at the front of the queue for painkillers. With tears in my eyes, I managed (quite easily I think) to explain to the elderly lady serving that I was in pain, and that something stronger than paracetamol and ibuprofen would be appreciated. She was lovely, and I left with some stuff that you can’t take for more that 3 days in case you get addicted to it (that runs out tomorrow by the way), and a resolve to go back to the dentist to request politely that perhaps I might be seen earlier than in 4 weeks time. I needed a few minutes composure time before walking back into the dentist… so that I could actually talk… but result – only have to wait for a week now – with another different dentist – but look at my face… is it bothered?… It is not.
Running has been one of the last things on my mind at present. However, since the end of Juneathon I have put on weight and been very undisciplined about exercise so, whilst still undisciplined, I have just not felt like eating much so the weight is back to a Juneathon-finishing fighting weight (Slightly below clinically obese but still in the overweight category – apparently!)
I have signed myself up for the Marathontalk magic mile, mind you. And before all this tooth stuff kicked in I had done a couple of mile-long runs with the buggy (an 8:20 and an 8:30) and one without the buggy (7:31), but I haven’t been following the 6 week recommended free speed-training programme provided on the Marathontalk site. So it will be interesting to see if I get time to actually improve things before the first week in August when I have to give it flat-out effort. I’ll let you know.
As for the press-ups…?… well… these also ceased since the toothache started. I managed 50 in one go before it all kicked off but I’ve had fever and muscle weakness accompanying the abscess so not most condusive to any sort of training really. I might try again now though, cos I feel I could, just to see…
…hang on…
… ok… I just managed to equal the 50… happy with that for now… but I really don’t think 100 is anywhere in sight at the moment.
If I don’t post again before next weekend, it means I’ve died on the dentist’s chair.
Hmmm… Just kinda looks like a regular mugshot, but I assure you, me left jaw feels like I’ve been punched. Hard. And then I’ve been forced to eat a golf ball… made of cotton wool.
notmuchofarunner 