We shall fight them in the root canals...

Day 87 

General status update

Nose: still unsightly, but improving

Hair: unsightly, not improving, but still attached to head, more or less, so I can’t complain.

Jaw: the pain is now abating, due to the medicated temporary filling, and the antibiotics. I had misunderstood: the dentist says the root canal treatment – killing the nerve – can’t be done until the pain and infection have completely died down, and the antibiotics are finished, i.e. next Tuesday. Until then it just has to be left to settle down... Pity next week is also chemo week, eh?

Nausea demon: Went to an interview in Knightsbridge for a job providing pregnancy nausea services to the wife of a Russian oligarch expecting twins; apparently the job comes with his own flat and a convertible VW. Fancy.

Chemo Muse: She tells me that now the pain of the toothache is abating, I have until tomorrow to get my act together again – we need to get back on track.

Anti-Tooth Fairy: she’s in situ until next Tuesday, for when the root canal treatment is now scheduled. That’s 2 days before FEC5. Lovely. She’s sharing a room with the Despair Demon – they work together a lot, apparently.

Chemo Brian: Badgering me to get tickets for the Boss in Hyde Park in the summer – told him we went last summer, it poured with rain, we were knee-deep in malodorous woodchips, and then they switched off the sound after Paul McCartney joined in the encore – never again. Have never been quite sure whether switching off the sound after Macca joined in was a political act.

.

Fatigue/weakness: yes, and to spare – would you like some?

Sleep, lack of: good old Lorazepam sorted that one out last night – I used to be a clean-living girl, very wary about taking this kind of stuff, now I drug myself into a stupor at the drop of a hat. Needs must when the Devil drives…

Anxiety level (1-10): lalalalalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU

State of mind: I think we’re back to rabid Arctic Wolf again, pretty much. Not to be approached by members of the public – may be armed.

So the toothache crisis is, temporarily, over.

Allegedly.

I went to the dentist today and saw the dentist’s dad, because my dentist has gone down with what sounds worryingly like the Norovirus.

Oh God, let’s not even do that thought experiment, shall we?

My dentist’s dad is also a dentist; in fact he is the Überdentist at the family practice, and a Big Man in Implants, by all accounts. He practices dentistry as a titular patriarch, surrounded by his Islamic feminist dentist daughters, who all sport cunningly swathed headscarves that manage to look totally chic and glamorous and Grace Kelly and not the slightest bit oppressed thank you, which they’re manifestly not as they all graduated from top London universities and are completely kick-ass dentists.

cunning swathing,of the kind practiced by Islamic feminist dentists of my acquaintance - fabulous look, no?

I did in fact do a deal with my dentist that in exchange for the informal tutorials in evolutionary theory and its applications I gave her during some earlier appointments –

What can I say? IT CAME UP, evolution is very controversial in the circles she hangs in, and I am an evolutionary demographer by trade, or was until recently….

- she would teach me how to do the whole cunning swathing thing with the headscarves so that when the FEC did its evil work and made me go bald, I would be able to don headscarves with some élan; to achieve this I was in definite need of assistance, as untutored the best I can do is either

 a) Hilda Ogden in Coronation St from the 1970s

or

 b) bewildered shepherd in Nativity play (thank you, R – I wish I could deny it but that picture of me in the Primani snood from an earlier post says it all, really).

But then I didn’t go bald, mysteriously – or haven’t yet, anyway…

 (touch wood – let’s not tempt fate here, because I have a deep, dark suspicion that my hair is just holding its breath, and that shortly after FEC5 it will finally exhale and my entire head of hair will just drop out in one go, saying ‘Only joking – you didn’t really think you were going to get away with it, did you?’ I can totally see that happening. If hair could speak. Which mine probably can, after four doses of FEC and counting; it’s just biding its time...)

….so I haven’t yet had to trouble the dentist for lessons in cunning swathing, after all.

I digress. Massively.

So today I saw the Dental Paterfamilias, whose name, lyrically, is Dr Bashar Al-Naher (R: ‘it should be Dr Gnasher, really, shouldn’t it?’) and he explained to me that they can’t do the root canal work on my tooth until the inflammation of the nerve and the infection has died down, and the antibiotics are finished, which will not be for another week. And as the pain has lessened considerably today, he deems that the medicated dressing inside the tooth is doing its work, and so the temporary filling should remain undisturbed for the next week while the antibiotics finish off the job.

Hmmm.

In theory I am completely with this programme – it’s unfortunate that this means I’ll be having root canal work in the same week as chemotherapy treatment, but the tooth has to be sorted asap and waiting until after FEC5 really wouldn’t be a good idea, in terms either of neutrophil counts or sanity preservation.

It’s just that the tooth still keeps twinging – and my rampant paranoia is conjuring up a monumental struggle inside my tooth between the Forces of Evil (nasty Nazi-like bacteria seeking to burst beyond the tooth and swim into my bloodstream, whence to launch all-out war and bring on neutropenic sepsis) and the Forces of Good (plucky little neutrophils, much-depleted by the chemo but battling bravely on in the manner of the British forces shortly before they all had to be evacuated at Dunkirk, AND the antibiotics whose role here is, obviously, that of the Americans who turn up late for the war as usual but are very well-nourished and fighting fit).

It occurs to me that I may be sounding even more demented than usual this evening, but it’s really been a difficult few days…

Time to go to bed, and hope that the neutrophils and the antibiotics will keep on winning, and the twinging will stop, and everything will be JUST FINE until next Tuesday.

Of course it will.