I didn’t have a very good weekend.  Friday evening I met Rachel, Sue and Maria in the Bistro Bar in [tag-tec]Chantemerle[/tag-tec] to celebrate Rachel’s birthday.  An early drink at 5.30 stretched out to 10 pm and although we had a very pleasant evening, all that sugar plus chocolate cake brought on a migraine which lasted all weekend coupled with the fact that I also had severe toothache.  This is a tooth that has been giving me some jip on and off for 18 months although my dentist back in England has told me on 2 occasions he could find nothing wrong.  Well, it flared up about 5 weeks ago, and then calmed down so I thought I would be OK until my return to England at the end of the month.  I had to, however, find a dentist first thing this morning and tried the practice that Michel had recommended 5 weeks ago.  This was 9.30 on a Monday morning and I had expected a queue out of the door, but no, they were able to see me straight away.

This practice boasts several dentists and dental nurses, a receptionist and an administrator and was very new and high tech.  I was taken into a small office where all my details were fed into a computer (my dentist still uses paper records) and then told to sit in the waiting room.  I had hardly sat down when I was called into see M. Semet.  I explained my problem and after a quick examination I was taken for an X-ray.  Well, at my dentists in England, they have been using the same machine for as long as I have been going there, which is about 30 years and which consists of one clamping something between one’s teeth whilst the machine is aimed at the particular troublesome spot.  Here, I was told to rest my chin on the shelf (rather like the opticians) whilst biting onto a tube-like thing with my front teeth.  A machine then circled round the whole of my head taking X-rays of the whole of my mouth which I saw later on the computer in M. Semet’s surgery.  This was a huge light and airy room and very clean – all clients have to don plastic socks over their shoes.  I managed to convey my problem and the dentist proceeded to take off the top of the tooth which was mostly filling anyway, and then he gave me a prescription for antibiotics.  When I told him I would not be seeing my dentist until the 3rd July he insisted I come back again this week as it was too long to wait.    He was “trés sympa” and apologised that his English was not good altho’ I noticed he did try to speak it nearer the end of my appointment.  I think as he is holidaying in Scotland next week, he thought perhaps he should be practising.  Anyway, I was very pleased I had managed the whole ordeal in French but wonder just exactly he will doing on Wednesday as I would have thought there is no way that tooth could be built up again.  I was there for nearly one hour and it only cost me 21 euros which I thought very reasonable.

This evening my face has now swollen on the left side and I look rather like David Coulthard!