Hypatia Avenue

"Just try to relax. This might feel a bit odd..."

I've had a very busy but very productive Monday in the office, which is very rare. Still, I've just had a weekend of activity and productivity so I'm hoping this streak of energy for Getting Things Done continues. Hard to believe that only a week ago, my Monday was like this:

I went to work and had a fairly productive morning

Had lunch and brushed my teeth thoroughly afterwards

Went to the dental surgery ward of Guy's Hospital about 5 minutes walk away from my office and incidentally, only two minutes walk from the Old Operating Theatre which I had visited on Friday. The dusty bottles of ether and strychnine, the 2 inch wide syringes and rusty, gigantic saws for amputation were still lodged very prminently in my imagination. I was pleased to be in the 21st century about to have surgery and at the same time feeling absolutely rotten about it.

I sat in a scary dentist's chair with an amazing 23rd floor view of London

A very nice nurse and a very nice doctor dressed me in a bib and a lot of paper towels and unwrapped some trays full of shiny tools

Then they gave me four massive anaesthetic injections in my lower lip

Then they cut into the swelling that has been distorting my lipstick for the last few months and removed the cyst and damaged saliva gland that has been causing all my disgusting and disfiguring trouble

There was a lot of blood. I had to wear goggles because there was a small amount of gory spurting and both doctor and nurse had to lean on my face in order to get the curved blades in at the right angle. I counted three different types of scissors being used on my numb and swollen lip

Two stitches and lots of swabs later, I was on the tube home

My mouth was still numb and a bit bloody when Mr Avenue came home and we couldn't enjoy our usual "welcome home" kiss which made me rather sad because I would have liked a bit of comforting

The anaesthetic finally wore off and I was hungry so despite the soreness of the incision and the bruising along my lower lip, we had dinner

I went to rinse my mouth with hot salt water as recommended by my surgeon and decided to investigate the site of my operation

There was a bit of blood. And there was one less stitch

I had eaten one of my stitches

I had had quite enough for the day, so I went to bed early feeling rather creeped out with myself but was mildly cheered when I went through my wallet the next morning and realised I had won a voucher for a bag of frozen beans from Sainsburys

A week later and there's a definite indentation to mark that something had happened to my lower lip but apart from that, I can eat again, I can paint my lips red again, I can bite into hard green apples without worrying about bursting the damned cyst and best of all...

... I can kiss again. I'm very, very, very pleased. Aren't you?