Day 221 Alien Dentists, Sleepy Cats and Me

Looking for a good, cheap rental in Hollywood.

Travel Diary:   Checked out offers on Budget car rental site to estimate what I’ll have to pay weekly, and it looks like about $250, if I pick it up from one of the cheaper locations, and get the full insurance, which I will because about three years ago I rented a car, scratched the driver doors on a fence and was up for $3000 in repairs! I now ALWAYS take out the extra insurance, even if the excess is $500 – it’s a lot cheaper than the possible alternative.

People have often asked me why not just buy a car if it’s for over a month or so? Well, it’s not as cheap as all that, especially when one has to make sure there’s a smog filter certificate (compulsory), and go through all the hassle of finding the car and then selling it. With a good enough rental deal, I also get a much newer, hassle free car.

Follow up to yesterday’s post: I’ve decided, after much thinking and research, to go with a “sleepy dentist” instead of the one I had lined up. He, by the way, laughed when I asked why couldn’t I have it all done under a General Anaesthetic. Shows yet again how a person knows nothing about what we go through with our hyper reactive pain receptors as Fibromites. If they did, they’d at least offer me the sleepy alternative.

I know when the aliens beam me up for dental work, it will hurt unless they put me to sleep first.

I spoke to the sleepy dentist receptionist, who was lovely and helpful, and said that they may be able to do EVERYTHING in one session while I’m unconscious! I would much rather have to recuperate with the pain I will undoubtedly have after one session than after the six I was scheduled for. It will also be more expensive, with a gap to pay both the dentist and the anaesthetist, but it will be worth it. The only real difficulty is that I can’t get my first exploratory visit until August 21st, and then they only do the sleepy sessions twice a month. This, of course, interferes with going back to Sydney, but I’ll just have to work it out. I also have to work out the bureaucratic hoops I’ll have to jump through to switch my government allowance payment plan to the new dentist. However, I think in the long run it will all be worth it.

If you are a Fibromite and need any dental work done, there is a ton of literature on the ‘Net written by people who ACTUALLY KNOW WHAT WE GO THROUGH! Here are a couple of great links:

http://www.dentalphobia.com/lsd-article_fibromyalgia.htm

http://www.fmsow.ca/dsdental.htm

I find that when most people tell me, whether they’re a medical professional or a “civilian”, that they do know about Fibro., they really haven’t got a clue. They don’t understand either the constant pain, or the ramifications of that pain. The top 2 complaints from all Fibromites are the condition not being understood, and the belief in people’s heads that our condition is all in OUR heads. Imagine you needing medical help of any kind, maybe after a car crash, for instance, and then being told that if you just changed your attitude and exercised more it would get better!

No one knows how to relax like a cat!

The good news is that the hypnosis therapy is relaxing me on a deep level, even though the sleep is not quite right yet. I stopped posting properly so that I wouldn’t be thinking every day I “should” be doing it (one of my big Emotional Triggers is the “Should” button), thus interfering with all the relaxation work I’m doing. I’m meditating a lot, working on a routine for sleep that will get me in the right mood to relax and go through my hypnosis ritual, (which includes a hot bath first), and just all in all I wanted to focus on relaxing and, hopefully, sleeping, before anything else. Yes, I am sleeping marginally better, but the main thing is I’m feeling the relaxation itself taking effect on a daily basis. As a person who has always been wound a bit tight (!), I’m finding that a very nice change.

I’m now posting again without the “should” getting in the way, and feeling so positive in general that I even agreed to coach an actress via phone the other night – my first client in over a year! I’ve been putting everyone off since the Fibro. flared; I couldn’t cope with anything except trying to function at a basic level through the pain and fatigue. (BTW, if one more person/researcher/doctor says this condition is not progressive, I’m going to stick a fork in their head. Let them know what real pain feels like!) Who knows, maybe I’ll be able to start coaching again sooner than I thought.

Time to start my sleep routine.

I’m just relaxin’ …