The other side effects - a retrospective 1 September 2020

 Feeling much better now and waiting for telephone consultation with Dr M.

I was off my beloved hot chocolate and sweet things for about two weeks, but the sweet tooth is back. I did try to stay off but just couldn't do it. We've been in Devon for a week and I had cake nearly every day for elevenses and tea.

Day 6 was a bit of a washout - planned to play at making hanging things with slate and paint and 'gold' leaf but just couldn't summon up the energy and spent a lot of the day on the sofa instead. As usual the down time pays off in reading - have finally read Hardy's Mayor of Casterbridge and Return of the Native. Enjoyed them so much more than Tess of the d'Urbevilles or Jude the Obscure which I did read long ago. (Lost patience with Tess and as others have said, J the O is just so relentlessly miserable.)

Day 7 was the first day I felt like I achieved something - two and a half hours at the allotment, blog, wrote something for the Macmillan writing group and joined in by Zoom, then took the dog for a walk with  my shopping trolley full of water bottles to give the new street trees some hydration at dusk.  This has been a hell of a year for Barnet to have planted new street trees. I'd be interested in what informs their choice - the two in our road are more like shrubs than proper trees, although the Hibiscus did have a lovely show of flowers in July.

Largely an improving picture from Day 8 although was banjaxed by heat on occasion and felt a bit bloodless on others. We went for a 3-mile walk in Trent Park on Day 11 - had never been there before and it wasn't what I was expecting. Better, not wild but wilder than expected, not manicured. Main features, apart from wide open spaces were three second-hand obelisks made of rocks, various.

I got a sore mouth for week 3. I'd forgotten about soft toothbrushes and I may have set off a little infection by scrubbing away at the gum where one of my wisdom teeth used to be - soreness started there accompanied (I now think) by intermittent swollen tonsil on that side. But then it spread to my whole mouth and the inside got all rough. Even the soft toothbrushes come with rough backs (for tongue scrubbing? Why would you do that?) which comes into contact with your oral mucosae while the brush bit deals with your teeth. I think they're all designed for people with sensitive teeth rather than people with sore mouths.

But there was only one day when I had to consider whether eating was worth the pain. On that day, I resorted to the recommended salt water wash - expecting it to hurt too, but it was great and seemed to act like anaesthetic for a while. When the sore mouth started receding I got those cracks at the corners of my mouth which took a few days to heal. Not a good look - ugh.



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