I wish I’d listened to good advice.
I have a great dentist. He is personable, his work is good, my children like him and he never rips me off. I have no reason to think that the advice he gives should be ignored. Back in November I had my annual check up to be told that one of my teeth was looking dodgy. It had been filled a couple of times (thanks to the calcium leaching effect a couple of pregnancies seemed to have on me), there was little real tooth left and the fillings were looking weak. ‘You need a crown’ he regretfully announced. ‘It’ll be expensive so it’s ok to wait until after Christmas, but don’t wait too long’.
Heaving a resigned sigh, I walked away, dug a big hole in the sand and placed my head firmly there. There was no pain, I could chew and I certainly could think of a hundred better things to spend upwards of £500 on.
Fast forward to the Easter holidays. Proud of the fact that I was eating clean, had ignored the children’s sugar packed loot from Easter Sunday I succumbed to the inevitable chocolate craving. Then I remembered the few squares of Green and Black sitting in the fridge. Dark chocolate! Hurrah! Chocolate craving dealt with and the health benefits of that bitter sweet taste in one!
Funny – I hadn’t remembered buying nutty chocolate……
There, in my mouth, shattered molar…. I could hear the dentist’s words…. ‘don’t wait too long’……. Sigh
It was the inevitable. I knew there was a problem and I did NOTHING ABOUT IT! The story gets worse… the following day, after only 24 hours of eating on one side of my mouth (I’ll make the appointment tomorrow….) POP! out came a crown on the other side (yes, I brush my teeth, yes, I floss, yes, I IGNORE MY DENTIST!!) So, ignoring advice, acknowledging a problem and hoping it would go away left me in a place where,
1. The problem doubled
2. The cost to me increased
3. The work required was going to take longer and cost me more money…
4. I felt more than a tad embarrassed when I ended up back in the dentist’s chair (he’s too nice to say ‘I told you so’ otherwise he may have got a mouthful. Oh, except I haven’t got a mouthful…)
Total pain in the backside….
So here’s the thing….
You had a baby (or two, or three). Your midwife suggested you did your pelvic floor exercises (eh? what?). You carry on your daily life, slightly disgruntled by your achy back, or your softer tummy, resigned to the fact that you need to be a little bit nearer the loo than you did before. It’s normal now to have the third but last, then the second but last, then the final wee before you go out for a run (you know, just in case). You buy your child the big trampoline. You go on the trampoline. You decide, you know what, maybe the trampoline isn’t for me…
But hey, for some lucky few, the figure comes back. The exercises sort out your tummy muscles. You can run again! Pelvic Floor – pah! it’s fine….. then
Something happens – a chest infection that causes chronic coughing, another baby perhaps or maybe just the fact that your body is getting a wee bit older and your hormones are changing and….
uhoh, things are suddenly not quite what they used to be.
Remember in the hazy post birth hours that midwife giving you that sheet with ‘those’ exercises on? Wish you’d done them? Wish you’d understood them? Things can be fixed later, but how bad are you prepared to let them get first? Weak tummy muscles which despite pilates, bootcamp, running, just won’t go flat? A leaky pelvic floor that gets worse each month? A pelvic organ prolapse?
It’s tiresome to take action sometimes; admitting that things aren’t quite right, finding the time to deal with it, the expense, the acceptance that things aren’t working like they were in our teens / twenties / before we had children. A total pain in the backside! But who wants that extra cost? That hassle? My advice? Don’t wait ’til after Christmas….
