Like an old lady

France, evening

My dinner tonight has been boiled vegetables with some melted cheese. The vegetables were over-boiled so that I could smash them well. Still, it took me more than an hour to eat my dinner, having to stop every few minutes in pain and to put a small piece of cotton back in the right place.

I have no idea how many small pieces of cotton I ate in the last days.
It is not even biological cotton.

But let me go back to where all began.
Last week I started to have tooth pain. I didn't give any consideration to it, till after two days the pain was so strong that I couldn't eat without feeling a sharp pain. I saw a dentist who said that I had an infection in one tooth. The conversation went more or less like that:

-Him: This tooth has been devitalized.
-Me: Yes. In Germany, a few years ago. I had a long surgery to the nerve and the bone around the nerve because there was an infection.
- Him: ah, the Germans.....they never clean the infections!
- Me: I think they did. The surgery lasted quite longtime and I never had any problem after that.
- Him: until now.
- Me: until now, yes. But this happened in 2004, so almost 6 years ago. If the infection was still there, it would have bothered me earlier.
- Him: the Germans are the only ones who never think about cleaning the infection in the tooth too.
- Me: whatever. Can we do something for it?
- Him: sure. Let me make a hole in the tooth, till the bone, so that the anaerobic bacteria will die. If you get fever or your cheek starts to swell, then get an anti-inflammatory and an antibiotic. Otherwise, we meet in a week from now. If you eat, put some small piece of cotton to close the hole in the tooth and remove it after eating.

This is how it went. So, the Germans, who based on my experience are careful in anything they do, turned out according to my dentist to be much less careful than the French........OF COURSE!!! For a moment I forgot the French Dogma:

FRENCH ALWAYS DO IT BETTER!

Even when it comes to dentist, apparently.

Anyway. Have you ever tried to eat with a piece of cotton in one of your teeth? it keeps falling. And if you are like me, by the end of the meal you probably ingested at least two or three pieces of cotton. All this (putting the cotton in the hole in your tooth and putting the cotton back when after a few seconds after you started to eat it falls out of place) is especially unpleasant when you are eating with other people. Of course, my social life is generally flat, but exactly in this moment, I had plenty of invitations for dinners and lunches.
I have to admit that I felt quite embarrassed.
But no fever or swollen cheek.

Things were starting to get better and I was already dreaming of being able to eat properly again and being able to bite things without needing a cotton replacement every few seconds, when today I felt a strong pain again in my tooth and in my head too. Fortunately, the super-French dentist received me at the end of the afternoon.
He did something to fix the problem and when I almost vomited for the disgusting thing that he put in my mouth he said:

-There is nothing better than injecting some bleach into the place where the infection is.

-Me: did you say bleach? In my mouth? so is this thing that I am swallowing now with my saliva a bleach.......????

-Him: Everyone cures infections like that. Of course, not the Germans.

Right....not the Germans......and maybe there is a reason for that.....Now I am going to have a very white throat, teeth (that would be nice), and stomach. Lovely!

Anyway, back to long lasting dinners with soft food and a lot of cotton pieces digested. Plus, antibiotics and anti-inflammatory. French, Germans.....I don't really care who is doing things better at this point....

CAN JUST THIS INFECTION GO AWAY SO THAT I DON'T HAVE TO FEEL LIKE AN OLD LADY ALREADY?????

Fortunately, I love completely destroyed/wet cookies in my tea or coffee....that is perfect now (I can see the faces of at least two people who were going like "uhhhh, disgusting!" every time they would see me doing that :-))

PS. While looking for images of old ladies on google, I got on the blog from where I took the image that you can see with this post. Check out this blog. It has a lot of very nice sketches.