dental disaster #373

Away this weekend with my mum for 2 days at the Lamphey Court hotel in West Wales to celebrate her 87th birthday. Poor love, it has reached the point where she does remember that her driving licence was withdrawn several months ago, but can no longer remember that her memory loss was the reason.

When my brother was down here from London recently I asked him to contact the DVLA for news of her appeal. His efforts were of little use; he certainly did not bring the situation forward at all. So, taking advantage of the inclement weather (it rained intermittently when it was not raining persistently)I rang them myself and found the problem. While we were able to obtain a letter from her GP some months ago which stated (only in slightly ambiguous terms) that she was still safe to drive, her consultant at the memory clinic sent a much more negative response. I tried to contact him directly, and his secretary assured me she would pass on a message to ring me back. He never did, and while we waiting for the weather to improve (it didn't) I composed a letter to him requesting that he reconsider his decision and suggest that a further assessment be carried out to test her ability on the road objectively. We shall see if this has any effect, but while I continue to make positive noises to my mum about her prospects, I am privately gloomy about the possibility of her ever driving again.

Next to the hotel stands the remains of the medieval bishop's palace at Lamphey, which we eventually braved despite the rain. Clearly it was once a huge and lavish place. In the 14th century it was used a "holiday home" for the bishop of St Davids, a man made exceedingly wealthy through the huge tracts of arable land granted to the diocese by the crown. Now an elegant ruin, it must at its height have been a massive compound, as big as a fair-sized village. I have to say I was most impressed by how well my mum dealt with the challenge of walking through the site, with its many steep and treacherous steps. She negotiated several, but when she was confronted by a particularly steep and narrow spiral staircase, she prudently declined and waited for me at the bottom.

In my letter to the consultant I made sure to give an account of how well she had coped.

Yesterday, at breakfast, I was eating a bowl of muesli when my upper right 2 snapped off at the gum. This is an incisor tooth, and losing it has given me the faintly comical appearance of the original gap-toothed yokel. I now need to contact my dentist ASAP, who will presumably remove the still embedded roots, before proceeding to yet another implant (price £2600). Until then I'll have to learn to avoid smiling. I already have 2 implants (or cyber-teeth, as I call them) and 2 more are planned for July- this will make a 5th. I was wondering what to do with my new-found wealth on receiving my pension lump sum. Now I know...