Dentist

Wednesday:

The Duromine is definitely working again. Reduced appetite, increased energy, dry mouth, slight nausea. I lost the holiday weight after only two days of eating less, so I guess it was mostly water! I certainly peed a lot. I did notice while we were away that my hands were puffy and my wedding ring was no longer loose like it has been for a while, back to normal now. And my face looks better, not grey and droopy. I think my body and face were trying to tell me not to eat so much.

I saw the dentist today to have two fillings of little cavities he found last check up, before the holidays. I was really worried about one as it was on the back of my back tooth and I have a strong gag reflex! I suggested that he let me sit in a more upright position as it's often the water filling my throat that is a problem, it was more difficult for him but it paid off. I only gagged twice. Win! Spent the next few hours with my face half numb worried I was drooling.

My garden thinks it is spring already. (To be fair, camellias flower in winter.)

It's going to look amazing when it really is spring!

Braces

Saturday:

Jasmine had braces put on her teeth yesterday. She's been talking about it for a year or so, her bottom teeth are crooked which no one else ever really notices but she wanted them straightened. All her friends have braces, apparently. I wasn't very enthusiastic about it because of my own experiences as a child, I think getting braces is what gave me my dentist phobia, but I didn't discourage her and she finally had them put on in a two hour appointment yesterday. She handled it very well (I was trying not to show my stress!) but her mouth is pretty sore now. We have soft food scheduled for the next few days, like risotto last night.

She didn't have to have any of the worst bits from my 35-year-ago experience: like having four teeth removed first, and having a plaster mould made of my teeth by holding basically concrete in my mouth and feeling like I was drowning while it set. She had a 3D scan made electronically instead, so much less traumatic!

Reluctant

Tuesday:

Well my mouth continued to be sore for four days after the dentist appointment, up to today when I'm finally able to chew (carefully) on both sides. Apparently this was normal after what I had done, they gave me a leaflet on how to deal with the discomfort. I've been feeling a bit miserable the past few days because I don't like pain (who does?), much better today. I'm not looking forward to the follow-up.

Last week my favourite person at TAFE, Cathy who looks like a young librarian already, said the library where she'd been doing some work with children (she's a music teacher) offered her some temporary work and she was trying to decide whether to take it or continue her studies or both... well she hasn't been in class this week and someone else said she took the job and has switched to online study. I've very glad for her to have this work experience but I'll miss her. I think the job is only for three months while someone else is on leave, so she might be back next term, but you never know. She seems like an ideal employee to me, one of the top students and very nice as well, they'd be mad to let her go.

I don't really want to look for work yet, I want to get my degree first. I couldn't juggle both.

We had lots of family gatherings on the weekend. Lunch after a christening (we didn't get to the service due to sport commitments), a birthday party dinner that night, and another family dinner the next night. I didn't have to cook all weekend! We have chosen a new oven to replace the broken one and it should be delivered on Thursday.

The pool tiler continues to show up occasionally, erratically, and do I don't know what. Preparing the surface. No actual tiles yet! I thought it would all be done last week, silly me. You'd think I'd have enough experience with tradesmen by now. He wants an interim payment but I'm feeling a bit reluctant.

Dentist

Friday:

Another week gone by. And as usual I turn to my blog after a bad day. It gives rather a skewed view, my life is usually pretty good! But good days are often not much to write about.

But today I had a dentist appointment (shudder). I'm not scared of doctors or needles, but I'm very phobic about dentistry. Fear, a small mouth, and a strong gag reflex. I hadn't been for a bout two years, not since we moved to Sydney. And I might not have 'got around to it' this time but I thought I'd lost a filling and could feel a big gap - actually it turned out a piece of one tooth had chipped off and there was another big crack in it. I seriously considered having the tooth removed, but decided to be brave and get the work done.

An hour and a half in the chair today, with two more shorter appointments in the future. It was horrible. Ten hours later and my mouth is still sore this evening.

I wanted to just go home and collapse but we'd organised for me to drop Tim's car off for a rego check, so I did that and faced a long walk home on trembly legs. But then I saw my sister-in-law come out of a shop across the road and I managed to get to her car before she reversed into me (I think she was a bit startled by this crazy person running up to her window waving their arms frantically) and of course she drove me home - I was so grateful! It would have been a pleasant half hour walk if I wasn't miserable and shaky and probably still drooling from the anaesthetic.

The car was supposed to be ready by 1pm but it wasn't done until 5, too late to pick up today, so that meant I didn't have to walk back either! Tim can go tomorrow.

In other news term has started and we're all back into our studies. I got my other exam from last term back and did well, only one question wrong again. I wouldn't say I'm breezing through - I'm working hard for my good results.

On the pool front we've engaged a tiler to create an area next to the pool to put our chairs and things on (we'll fill the rest of the backyard with tropical plants so it's like a resort), after rather more delays than he'd anticipated he finally started today. The pool fence inspection guy came yesterday, unfortunately there are some issues we'll have to fix so that still isn't done. And we can't get the pool finished until the fences are compliant. Sometimes I fear it will never be done! But surely one day we'll have a usable finished pool.

Facing my fears

Monday:

(morning)
I had two things to dread today and have got one of them over with, the dentist visit. I am very dentist-phobic (I bet there is a real word for that - there you go, ondontophobia). I have no problem with doctors or needles or intrusive examinations; but put me in a dentist chair and I'm a trembling mess who gags every few seconds as the dentist tries to do something horrible like, oh, clean my teeth. It is actually a very stressful experience for me. After I had to have a root canal, which took several hour-long visits, I didn't go back for four years. This time it's been two years since my last visit, and I tried a new dentist, the one I take my kids to. She is lovely, and she tried a few things to help me. She let me sit up instead of lying back, and that was enormously helpful. It's not pain I'm scared of, I think it is mainly that helpless feeling. Also I can feel like I'm drowning. So sitting up was much better. Also she put some salt on my tongue. I've never heard of that before, but it actually helped stop me gagging so much. Weird. And finally she did half the clean with the usual electric stuff and the water spray and suction etc but decided I wasn't handling it well and went to just a manual pick. She deals mainly with kids and I think she was great!

The best thing was no cavities so I don't have to go back for another year. But when I do, it will definitely be to her. And she asked me to put a review online, I will and it will be glowing!

The other worry for today is getting the roof inspected, I need to get the tiles fixed asap but it's hard to find someone to do it soon. I've got the representative from a big company coming today, and I've just got the feeling they are going to be very pushy about getting the whole roof restored or something I don't want or need. So I will have to be assertive, which I find a bit scary. But hopefully it won't be like that. I try not to worry about stuff that might not even happen.

(afternoon)
The roof guy was very nice but as I expected pushed for total roof restoration which is not something I want to do right now with the future so unsettled. The interaction was fine, but he said there isn't really a temporary patch-up that he can do. The worrying part is that I actually believe him about what needs to be done, I've had quite a few handymen/insurance people etc come out here lately and this house really needs some work. But I don't want to spend thousands when I don't know if we're staying, or going away for a year, or renovating, or maybe selling permanently. Yet I don't want the roof to leak every time it rains and destroy the new floor and ceiling (when we get a new ceiling)! Troubling. I plan to get another opinion about the roof from another tradesman, and I'll see if they give different advice.

(evening)
I was just finishing dinner and feeling good when I got yet another phone call from those scammers. They call from India, so there is nothing the local police can do, and it may be one group or several with similar stories, but it is basically the same scam: "we are from x internet company and we can fix your computer remotely if you give us access". I was nearly caught out the first time because I was indeed having serious computer problems and they seemed to know about it, it was just bad timing (for me, perfect for them). I was lucky they didn't get away with anything. This is, what, the sixth time they have called me? And most of those in the past month or two. I responded much as I did last time: "Does your father know what you do for a living? Does your mother? How can you live with yourself?" Last time the woman hung up on me straight away, this time there was just silence until I hung up on the man. Then I started shaking. I could hardly walk for a minute, my legs were trembling so bad. I really hate confrontation! And part of me actually feels sorry for these people in a country with so much poverty where they might not have much choice. Would I steal food if I was starving? It's just a more sophisticated form of doing that. What if your choices are starvation, prostitution, or working for internet scammers where you never have to meet your victims? Of course some of them are probably heartless bastards. But some of them might feel guilty every day.

Report card:
Diet: Ok. Better today.
Exercise: Poor. Very short walk. It was something.
Water: Good.
Sleep: Poor.
Mental health: Poor. It's been a very stressful day. And I was really hoping to hear about Tim's job, but no.

Tooth

Monday:

Not much happened today. It was a long weekend and I had a handyman lined up to be here all day (we both knew it was a public holiday) but he ended up postponing. I was really tired and kind of zombied through the morning, played games with the kids in the afternoon.

One of my back teeth is a little sore and wiggles which can't be good. I need to book in to see a dentist, I haven't for two years. My old dentist left the clinic and I didn't like the new one. She didn't believe I flossed regularly which made me mad because I do at least twice a day - I just have some tricky gaps. And she kept pushing for procedures I didn't want so I'd book (to avoid standing up to her) then cancel. Three or four times in a row.  So I'll start going where I take my kids. They mostly do children's teeth but the dentist said they are happy to take adults too. And she should be used to nervous patients!

On the up side, my shoulder is great. Not troubling me at all. I just need to keep working on getting mobility back.

A fear of dentists

Tuesday:

I still hoping for a ticket to my daughter's dance concert, a school friend of Jasmine's is the granddaughter of the woman who owns (or runs, maybe) the dance school so I am using that connection and it looks like I might be able to get at least one. Yay for knowing the right people!

It's day two of carb loading. I ate nearly 3000 calories yesterday but that really wasn't necessary -- I had a lot of fat to go with my carbs. Potato in the form of hot chips, lots of butter and cheese with my bread etc. I had really planned to do better today but had a stressful morning then a comfort binge. I know I really need to work on how I deal with stress. Not just turning to food but in other ways too, I get so churned up inside and can't think straight.

Today's stress was the dentist.

I am really scared of the dentist. For a while I thought I was allergic to the anaesthetic they use because I always shake and feel sick until my dentist pointed out I have that reaction even when I don't have an injection! I'm not scared of doctors or needles but there is something about the dentist that freaks me out. I assume it goes back to lots of dental work and braces when I was only 10 or 11 (I had my braces done and off before I got to high school, very mature teeth, but small mouth with no room for them all). I remember hanging on to the parked car for dear life while my mum tried to drag me into the dentist surgery for my next extraction. Injections in the roof of your mouth hurt!

Today was just a clean and check-up. It was mostly done with a manual pick, which I can deal with ok so I got through it merely feeling like a seasick limp rag. It's the air, water, suction, drill, polishing etc that I struggle with. Strong gag reflex, but all psychological - I often gag when they are working right at the front of my mouth. There was only a little bit of that, and the hygenist was very good at giving me breaks when I needed them. But the problem is what they want to do in the future. At my last check up my dentist said she wanted to replace a couple of fillings as they are jagged and stopping me from flossing properly. I made an appointment but then cancelled. It just didn't seem worth the stress when it wasn't an actual emergency. But she pushed it again this time, prevention being better than letting decay start. Two hours (over two appointments) in the dreaded chair; with all the feared appliances. She even talked about using a dental dam - my last dentist tried that once for about two minutes and I felt like I was drowning in my own spit and panicked.

I've made the first appointment, but I don't know if I can do it. I know I should be brave and get it over with, and maybe straight after today's appointment (with the horror so fresh) isn't the best time to make the decision. I'll leave it for now.

But I filled the gaping void of fear in my belly with food.

I'm usually against non-sugar sweetners but yesterday I bought Natvia (made from the stevia leaf and supposed to be natural) because I really do want to cut down on sugar and carbs (after tomorrow) and I haven't had much success with sugar-free tea. Less than half a calorie and no carbs per sachet. I love it! If anything, it tastes better than sugar, although I bet I couldn't actually tell the difference in a blind taste test. So unless I read somewhere about how bad it is for me I'll be using it in my tea and maybe introduce it elsewhere as well.

I hate weigh-in Wednesday

Wednesday:

It is just the worst day to weigh-in, right after my D&D supper binge. Which was posponed. So I ate the Doritos anyway. Sigh.

My weight had been under 78 kg for more than a week. But today it popped up to 78.2 kg. Bugger. I think I'm going to change my weigh-in day to Monday. Much more logical, and less soul-destroying. Or Sat morning maybe?

Still feeling a bit off colour today, and used my dentist appointment in the morning as an excuse to not do any exercise. I have a bit of a dentist phobia and a strong gag reflex, so it's always an ordeal that leaves me wrung out and exhausted. Today was just a clean but I was still in the chair for 45 mins.

An editing job I've been waiting for will come in a couple of days, so I will have to get off my padded behind and learn to juggle work and exercise. At the moment I get to the end of the day and wonder what I did all day. 1-2 hours of exercise (when I'm not sick) but where did the rest of the time go? I'm not even playing any computer games, although I do waste a lot of time playing with my iPhone which is pretty much the same thing. And I read a lot. And review books. And do a bit of housework, although you wouldn't know it to look around this place. But way too much of nothing much.

I do have one NSV (non-scale victory) to report. I have completely weaned myself off high-GI nutritionally empty cruskits for breakfast (and snacks), and I don't buy them anymore. My regular breakfast is now Milo-flavoured instant oats with some raspberries stirred in. I know instant isn't the best way to have oats but it is a huge step up from cruskits with butter and vegemite. I've tried rolled oats and steel-cut oats and didn't like either of them and they take too long to cook. Even on weekends -- I don't want to wait 40 mins before I get breakfast! So, anyway, I am happy with my instant oats for the moment.

Tomorrow I promise I will start the day with exercise. A training run if I am up to it, a long walk if that is all I can do.